E.F. Benson Quotes

#1. Emotionally, I have no picture-book illustrated with memories of my first five years, but externally, I have impressions that possess a haunting vividness comparable only to the texture of dreams, when dreams are tumultuously alive.

E.F. Benson

#2. He exhibited three portraits, each a masterpiece, which killed every picture within range.

E.F. Benson

#3. don't mind good, sweet, gentle things, like - oh, like almost everybody, if only they are sweet and good naturally. But generally they are not. Their sweetness is the result of education or morality, or something tedious, not the result of their natures, of themselves.

E.F. Benson

#4. rambler roses climbed indifferently about, made friends where they could, and when they found themselves unable, firmly stabbed their enemies and strangled their remains.

E.F. Benson

#5. post-prandial hour. But oftener than not when these occasions occurred,

E.F. Benson

#6. Early impressions are like glimpses seen through the window by night when lightning is about.

E.F. Benson

#7. To most boys with growing limbs and swelling sinews, physical activity is a natural instinct, and there is no need to drive them into the football field or the fives court: they go there because they like it, and there is no need to make games compulsory for them.

E.F. Benson

#8. There is a certain amount which I shan't mention publicly," Elizabeth said. "Things about Lucia which I should never dream of stating openly."
"Those are just the ones I should like to hear about most," said Diva. "Just a few little titbits.

E.F. Benson

#9. No proper person fusses about death; that's a train which we are all sure to catch.

E.F. Benson

#10. Philosophers have argued about the strongest emotion known to man. Some say 'love', others 'hate', others 'fear'. I am disposed to put 'curiosity' on a level, at least, with these august sensations, just mere simple inquisitiveness.

E.F. Benson

#11. When one is happy there is no time to be fatigued; being happy engrosses the whole attention.

E.F. Benson

#12. Young gentlemen with literary aspirations usually start a new university magazine, which for wit and pungency is designed to eclipse all such previous efforts, and I was no exception in the matter of this popular gambit.

E.F. Benson

#13. An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the room had leaped into light.

E.F. Benson

#14. The greedy man is he who habitually eats too much, knowing that he is injuring his bodily health thereby, and this is a vice to which not the gourmet but the gourmand is a slave.

E.F. Benson

#15. Taste is one of the five senses, and the man who tells us with priggish pride that he does not care what he eats is merely boasting of his sad deficiency: he might as well be proud of being deaf or blind, or, owing to a perpetual cold in the head, of being devoid of the sense of smell.

E.F. Benson

#16. Queen Victoria was a woman of peerless common sense; her common sense, which is a rare gift at any time, amounted to genius. She had been brought up by her mother with the utmost simplicity, and she retained it to the end, and conducted her public and private life alike by that infallible guide.

E.F. Benson

#17. Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.

E.F. Benson

#18. Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic.

E.F. Benson

#19. She paused a moment.

"Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?" she said. "If you say 'no,' I shan't. But, please, Pepino--"

Pepino, however, had been instructed to say 'yes,' and accordingly did so.

E.F. Benson

#20. Vicinity to the sea is desirable, because it is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else, and because bathing and basking on the shore cannot be considered an employment but only an apotheosis of loafing. ("Expiation")

E.F. Benson

#21. Romance is a bird that will not sing in every bush, and love-affairs, however devoted the sentiments that inspire them, are often so business-like in the prudence with which they are conducted, that romance is reduced to a mere croaking or a disgusted silence.

E.F. Benson

#22. The hours of the morning between breakfast and lunch were the time which the inhabitants of Riseholme chiefly devoted to spying on each other.

E.F. Benson

#23. He deceived me by telling the truth.

E.F. Benson

#24. Bits of exultation kept peeping out, and Lucia kept poking them back.

E.F. Benson

#25. and it is only in loneliness, as Goethe says, that your perceptions put forth their flowers.

E.F. Benson

#26. There's many things in this world that will depress you, and make you good for nothing, if you take them seriously, and that cheer you up if you don't.

E.F. Benson

#27. For it is a most extraordinary, though common, phenomenon to find that perfectly virtuous and upright people often like to be thought just a little wicked, whereas bad people are totally indifferent for the most part as to whether or not anyone thinks them good or not.

E.F. Benson

#28. All the teaching I had ever received had failed to make me apply such intelligence as I was possessed of, directly and vividly: there had never been any sunshine, as regards language, in the earlier grey days of learning, for the sky had always pelted with gerunds and optatives.

E.F. Benson