Top 86 Helen Simonson Quotes

#1. I miss being a student," said Abdul Wahid. "I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #23760
#2. Men these days expect their wives to be as dazzling as their mistresses."
That's shocking," said the Major. "How on earth will they tell them apart?

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #23855
#3. Memories were like tomb paintings, thought the Major, the colors still vivid no matter how many layers of mud and sand time deposited. Scrape at them and they come up all red and blazing.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #101873
#4. I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one's problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #111763
#5. So he dreams himself the life he cannot have?" "Exactly. But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical. So tell me, who is to be pitied more?

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #124180
#6. Ah well, there you go. Young people are always demanding respect instead of trying to earn it. In my day, respect was something to strive for. Something to be given, not taken. Major Pettigrew

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #128772
#7. At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion?" ... "You are mistaken, Ernest," she said at last. "There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #186555
#8. You must know that I am entirely yours to command."
"I see chivalry lives on," she said.
"As long as there's no jousting involved, I'm your knight," he said.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #197242
#9. Do you really know what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?" "Is there any other kind?

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #254292
#10. How anyone could doubt the patriotism of my dachshunds is just shocking,

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #267648
#11. Humiliation is the sport of the petty

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #275380
#12. He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought
some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #323349
#13. The sky began to spit fat drops of rain and a cold gust of wind whipped dust and litter against his legs. The sadness vanished and he thought how glorious the day was.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #351744
#14. he realized he had inspired a sense of trust and indebtedness that would make it entirely impossible for an honorable man to attempt to kiss her anytime soon. He cursed himself for a fool. It

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #361818
#15. The age of great men, when a single mind of intelligence and vision might change the destiny of the world, was long gone.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #374695
#16. She gathered up a few thoughts of the lovelier parts of the afternoon and stowed them away in the back of her mind, where they might remind her at some future date that lovely afternoons do not survive the chill of dusk.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #415479
#17. But if all else fails, I can always write her a sonnet." "A sonnet?" said Hugh. "No woman can resist having her name rhymed with a flower in iambic pentameter," said Daniel.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #419429
#18. Here he was dispensing them as advice when he had only just taken them in as revelation. So, he thought, do all men steal and display the shiny jackdaw treasure of other people's ideas.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #463986
#19. Aunt Agatha says there isn't going to be a war," said Daniel, coming in behind her, laughing. "And so of course there won't be. They would never dream of defying her.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #470991
#20. I can't abide people who dislike dogs,

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #500588
#21. Passion is all very well, but it wouldn't do to spill the tea.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #538775
#22. We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #553233
#23. There is nothing more corrosive to character than money.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #554944
#24. My parents told me to marry for money,' said her husband. 'But I chose the love of a strong woman.'

'And look what trouble I turned out to be,' she said.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #559157
#25. Sometimes you can't fix everything," said Amina. "Life isn't always like books."
"No, it's not.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #579382
#26. He had always assumed gossip to be the malicious whispering of uncomfortable truths not the fabrication of absurdities. How was one to protect oneself against people making up things Was a life of careful impeccable behavior not enough in a world where inventions were passed around as fact

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #583040
#27. I wish you a strong heart and the love of family this afternoon.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #604185
#28. I admire your enthusiasm...but I cannot, in good conscience, assist you with any civic unrest.'
'Civic unrest? This is war, Major," said Alice, chuckling at him. 'Man the barricades and break out the Molotov cocktails!

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #626810
#29. But of course we do not like to listen to our mothers," said Mrs. Ali, smiling. "At least, not until long after we are mothers ourselves.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #634166
#30. We all pick and choose and make our religion our own, do we not?

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #636721
#31. It took him a moment to realize that they had been painted to look like fingernails, and he sighed over the extraordinary range of female vanities.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #643388
#32. The world is full of small ignorances. We must all do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don't you think

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #651683
#33. She was of that certain age when the bloom of youth must give way to strength of character, but her face was handsome in its intelligent eyes and commanding smile, and her hair retained a youthful spring as it threatened to escape from its carefully pinned rolls.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #658994
#34. While the lake lapped at their feet and the mountains absorbed their calls and the sky flung its blue parachute over their heads, he thought how wonderful it was that life was, after all, more simple than he had ever imagined.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #723002
#35. It was the cheapest kind of rebuke, to call a woman ugly, but one to which small boys and grown men seemed equally quick to stoop when feeling challenged.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #772283
#36. In which local hero Colonel Arthur Pettigrew, of the British army in India, held off a train full of murderous thugs to rescue a local Maharajah's youngest wife. For his heroism, the Colonel was awarded a British Order of Merit and personally presented with a pair

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #798995
#37. Youth's lost companion may be the measured friend of old age, I hope", said Daniel. "I may write a poem on the subject."
"Dear God, it sounds more like a cross-stitched pillow than a poem," said Hugh.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #806422
#38. He was struck by the thought that he was often lonely, even in the midst of many friends.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #829824
#39. Suffragettes!" whispered Agatha as if communicating a great scandal. "I'm quite sure invitations to tea are being quietly withdrawn all over the room.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #897145
#40. I later realized that this is my view of passion: It is rooted in genuine friendship. Chemistry may be two strangers exchanging smoldering looks - but passion has to be able to survive at least a twenty-minute conversation!

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #901348
#41. I am to be converted to the joys of knitting,' said Mrs. Ali, smiling at the Major.
'My condolences,' he said.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #953297
#42. You are not the first man to miss a woman's more subtle communication ... They think they are waving when we see only the calm sea, and pretty soon everybody drowns.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #967174
#43. Such an awful fragility of love he thought that plans are made and broken and remade in these gaps between rational behavior.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #982082
#44. The Major wished young men wouldn't think so much. It always seemed to result in absurd revolutionary movements or, as in the case of several of his former pupils, the production of very bad poetry.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1064031
#45. But it's not enough to be in love. It's about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it's what work you do ... Better to break both our hearts now than watch them wither away over time.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1084237
#46. You cannot run away from what's in your heart.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1143545
#47. He wondered whether it was his fault Roger had the perceptiveness of concrete.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1148145
#48. It was frustratingly common that children were no sooner gone from the nest and established in their own homes ... than they began to infantilize their own parents and wish them dead, or at least in assisted living.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1166210
#49. He had forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve...almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full of both heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it.
p 35

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1167881
#50. I tell myself it does not matter what one reads
favorite authors, particular themes
as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1184588
#51. It was an old story so rubbed with retelling that the edges were blurry.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1185455
#52. I would prefer you did not apologize for anyone else," she said. "My father always says that if we were as quick to own our own faults as we are to apologize for those of others, society might truly advance.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1206246
#53. You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1210593
#54. Ah yes, the dreaded one-way system ... He and Nancy had laughed later, imagining Dante redesigning Purgatory into a one-way system offering occasional glimpses of St. Peter and the pearly gates over two separate sets of dividing concrete barriers.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1231088
#55. Clean of officious fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge As when the Romans came.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1254955
#56. grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child's math book.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1267699
#57. The human race is all the same when it comes to romantic relations,' said the Major. 'A startling absence of impulse control combined with complete myopia.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1280852
#58. As I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1311203
#59. It is the unexpected note that makes the poem. You, Hugh, are the unexpected note. (pg 554)

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1332667
#60. It was never a good idea to confide in people. They always remembered, and when they came up to you in the street, years later, you could see the information was still firmly attached to your face and present in the way they said your name and the pressure of their hand clasping yours.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1353333
#61. Life does often get in the way of one's reading.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1365186
#62. He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time at avoiding ridicule.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1367658
#63. I don't believe the greatest views in the world are great because they are vast or exotic,' she said. 'I think their power comes from the knowledge that they do not change. You look at them and you know they have been the same for a thousand years.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1414041
#64. America wielded her huge power in the world with a brash confidence that reminded him of a toddler who has got hold of a hammer.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1454112
#65. War does have a way of interfering with one's most closely held desires.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1468240
#66. Most of all I remember that what begins with drums and fife, flags and bunting, becomes too swiftly a long and grey winter of the spirit.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1510191
#67. ...so Beatrice, who was tired of people feeling free to interrogate on her determination to live free of a husband, bit her lip and did not answer.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1528772
#68. Her favourite summer memories were not of events themselves, of picnics, sea bathing, tennis afternoons and cricket matches, but of watching Hugh and Daniel enjoying them and locking into memory the delight in their faces and their open laughter.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1530157
#69. And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1552863
#70. I am not loitering" said the Major. "I am simply indulging in a few moments of pastoral solitude"...

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1582193
#71. It's only now I realize how easy it was to do so on the backs of other women's sons.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1583767
#72. It's so much easier to tell other people how to do their job than fix one's own shortcoming, isn't it?

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1640677
#73. He liked the clover, evidence of the country always pressing in close, quietly sabotaging anyone who tried to manicure nature into suburban submission.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1644968
#74. Compromises are often built on their being unspoken.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1646982
#75. They sat a moment in embrace of silent mutual comfort, which was, she often thought, the reward of those long married.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1656518
#76. Often, I think, thy don't believe in anything at all and they just want to prove to themselves that I don't really believe anything either. (The Vicar)

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1670529
#77. It also occurred to him that perhaps this only meant that the less he saw of people, the more kindly he felt toward them, and that this might explain his current mild exasperation with his many condolence-offering acquaintances.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1678626
#78. earpiece in his ear.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1710091
#79. She remembered a sudden feeling of anger towards him, as if it were his fault that the sun and breeze did not restore him, and a swift shame in the recognition of her own selfish desire not to have to endure his decline. They

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1732346
#80. Look, the truth belongs to the guy who's best at sticking to his story,' said Ferguson.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1774062
#81. Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1829889
#82. a minute,' said Roger. 'You must ask

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1832567
#83. Young people are always demanding respect instead of trying to earn it. In my day, respect was something to strive for. Something to be given, not taken.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1840653
#84. He could not, in good conscience, promote any association with Daisy Green and her band of ladies. He could more easily recommend gang membership or fence-hopping into the polar bear enclosure at the Regents Park zoo.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1842925
#85. I said we would be informal," said Agatha. "I did not say we would be eccentric.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1858903
#86. There is often an inverse correlation between genius and personal hygiene.

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson Quotes #1869767

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