Here is Tom Jenkyns, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It’s true that his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.
She put the steaming mutton down in front and he smacked his lips ‘they taught you something where you came from, anyway,’ he said. ‘I always say there’s two things women ought to do by instinct, and cookin’s one of ’em.
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.
There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance.
Women want love to be a novel, men a short story.
We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.
I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.
I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.
If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.
Nothing like a cup of tea to make a person feel better, man or woman.
Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.
Life was a series of greetings and farewells, one was always saying good-bye to something, to someone.
Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.
Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear.
Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.
So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot.
A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.
Why, he wondered, should he remember her suddenly, on such a day, watching the rain falling on the apple trees?
A bad workman blames his tools.