Quotes from Elizabeth von Arnim

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.

On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of the forest, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me.

This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.

Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair.

September 15th. - This is the month of quiet days, crimson creepers, and blackberries; of mellow afternoons in the ripening garden; of tea under acacias instead of too shady beeches; of wood fires in the library in chilly evenings.

Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one's mind was a paramount duty.

If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations...don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.

In bed by herself: adorable condition.

Love is not a thing you can pick up and throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in that sordid place.

Love isn't decent. Love is glorious and shameless.

Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful.

Impossible for anyone to conceive the torments of his nights in bed with his beloved one and estranged from her. That turning of backs, that cold space between their two unhappy bodies.

Life is an admirable arrangement, isn't it, little mother. It is so clever of it to have June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work.

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable - should persist after the beauty is gone.

Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.

I would recommend to those persons who are inclined to stagnate, whose blood is beginning to thicken sluggishly in their veins, to try keeping four dogs, two of which are puppies.