Quotes About Perception

It is curious, isn't it, that things you know well never look dirty and dilapidated—other people's old furniture looks shabby and moth-eaten. "I would never have that horrible old couch in my room," you say. But your own old couch is every bit as bad and you are not disgusted with its appearance; it is your friend, you see, and you remember it when it was new and smart. Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.

People are apt to take you at your own valuation . . . I mean if you lie down on the floor and look like a doormat people can't be blamed for wiping their boots on you.

By this time Miss Lamington knew a good deal about her "boss". She knew that he was thirty-six (which was "quite old" in her estimation); he lived with his mother at Beckenham and travelled to the office every day

The strangest thing in all man's travelling is that he should carry about with him incongruous memories. There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only who is foreign, and now and then, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.

But that's just it! I never saw the old lady. I heard plenty about her from Roger and the doctor and the black satin pincushion—and they all told me something different. The only thing they had in common was terror; they were all scared to death of Aunt Beatrice.

She had been born in the days when children were taught to venerate the aged, but she had lived long enough to learn that she could count upon no respect from the young.

Knowledge is less hard to bear than ignorance if you possess an imagination.

This was all the easier because Mr. Marvell was so matter of fact about the whole thing—the picture might have been a still life of a jar of roses, or of a cabbage, rather than the naked figure of his wife. After all, he's her husband, thought Barbara vaguely, and that seemed to help.

She should know all there was to know - all that I knew, and, what was more important still, she should know that there was no more to know. Knowledge is less hard to bear than ignorance if you possess an imagination like Clementina's.

Were you really at school with Mums?' she inquired, fixing Zilla with wide-open eyes. 'Mums said you were—but you look much too old.' Zilla was displeased and showed it; she was not inured to home-truths delivered by the young and innocent

It would be much easier to entertain the Queen Mother, who is really grand, than a woman like Lady Fotheringay Massington who only thinks she's grand . . . and it would much more pleasant.

She had begun to realise that these people used the English language in a way of their own. They did not ask a question in a straightforward manner but merely made an observation with a questioning inflection in their voices; they never answered a question with a plain yes or no but preferred to answer it with another question.

Yes, it is. Some people would find it frightfully dull to be the daughter of the parson at Chevis Green." "But we don't," cried Liz. "That's exactly what I mean. It's in you from the beginning. Either there's this mysterious thing in you that makes you happy—that makes you interested in everything and interesting to yourself—or else there isn't, and you're dull and dreary and discontented.

It's double Dutch," declared the man in the check cap. " That's what it is." " Sounds like Danish to me," said the man in evening dress. " He looks like a Dane, too." " He's a Scot," I said, laughing. " So am I. He's offering me a lift home to Scotland, and I'd give my ears to take him at his word.

interested in Barbara, whom, after eighteen months of daily contact, he was just beginning to know. The strangest thing about Barbara, Arthur reflected, the strangest thing about this strange woman who was now his lawful wedded wife, was that although she understood practically nothing, she yet understood everything.

When Tilly was fifteen she had imagined herself in love with Archie Cobbe, for he was exactly the sort of young man to awaken a romantic attachment. He was so big and so good-looking and people said he was wild. You met him sometimes, riding about Chevis Green on a prancing horse and he always waved his cap and shouted "Hallo!" Then old Lady Chevis had died and left him Chevis Place, and Archie had taken the name of "Chevis" and settled down into a model squire.

This leads us to discuss the strange anomaly of marriage—why is it that selfish wives nearly always have saintly husbands, and how is it that selfish husbands are usually provided with door-mat wives?

Oh, I don't know. I just had a feeling that it was nice of her to be nice—if you see what I mean. She thinks Hugo is marvellous—and of course he is," added Patty hastily. "Does your father like him?" "Yes, of course. Everybody likes him.

Because if you walk in a city you're jostled by hundreds of indifferent people with indifferent eyes that look at you as if you weren't there at all. You begin to feel you must be invisible. Hundreds and thousands of eyes, and not one pair really seeing you or caring who you are. I'd rather walk down Beilford High Street and know that everybody was saying, 'There goes the mad painter!' It's better to be mad than invisible." She

Arnold was very clever," she said at last. "He saw how unsettled the world was—everything slipping downhill. He was sure there was going to be another war. Sometimes I almost feel glad he didn't live to see it. He said things were going from bad to worse and he was quite right, of course . . . but it doesn't help to be miserable; it doesn't make things right to keep on grieving over them. It clouds the sun, that's all.

Painters sometimes come to Cairn; they set up their easels and mix their colours and paint strange pictures of the place—pictures which, as far as the villagers can see, bear little or no resemblance to the scene.

Anne could not explain. It was always difficult for Anne to explain things even when they were clear to herself, and in this case she scarcely knew what she meant.

After about an hour she asks if we are nearly there, and I reply firmly that we shall not be there for hours and hours. 'But we've been hours and hours already,' she says, 'and we were in Scotland when we started so we must be nearly there. Scotland's quite small on the map.' I

It was a five-mile drive. I peeped out of my bedroom window as they came up the path together and my first impression was that they were very alike. They were the same height and had the same wavy grey hair. Later I changed my mind and decided that no two men could be more unlike.