Top 100 Von Arnim Quotes
#1. I wish,' said Rose anxiously, 'I understood you.'
'Don't try,' said Lotty, smiling.
'But I must, because I love you.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#3. The expression on her face, which was swept by the excitement of what she saw ... was as luminous and tremulous under it as water in sunlight when it is ruffled by a gust of wind.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#5. Yet he knew that if she wavered he would never forgive her; she would drop at once from her high estate into those depths in his opinion where the dull average of both sexes sprawled for ever in indiscriminate heaps.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#6. But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#7. And the more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#8. There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#9. Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one's mind was a paramount duty.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#10. How glad I am I need not hurry. What a waste of life, just getting and spending.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#11. I don't want to stay here without you,' said Dolly. 'This place is you. You've made it. It is soaked in you. I should feel haunted here without you. Why, I should feel lost.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#12. This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#13. Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs, - useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#14. Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#15. I don't believe there was ever anybody who loved being happy as much as I did. What I mean is that I was so acutely conscious of being happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn't ever bored, and was always and continuously grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of the world.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#16. 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.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#17. Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#19. And when I'm with you," she said, "I feel as if I were stuffed with - oh, with stars.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#20. Well, I for one am unable to imagine how anybody who lives with an intelligent and devoted dog can every be lonely.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#21. Oh Gertrud,' I cried, intolerably stirred by the bare mention of that
bed, 'this is a bleak and mischievous world, isn't it? Do you think we
shall ever be warm and comfortable and happy again?
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#22. But we found San Salvatore," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, "and it is rather silly that Mrs. Fisher should behave as if it belonged only to her."
"What is rather silly," said Mrs. Wilkins with much serenity, "is to mind. I can't see the least point in being in authority at the price of one's liberty.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#23. What fun it had been, having an admirer even for that little while. No wonder people liked admirers. They seemed, in some strange way, to make one come alive.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#26. The passion of being forever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#27. I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#28. ...she found herself blessing God for her creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for His inestimable Love; out loud; in a burst of acknowledgement.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#29. When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#30. Keep quiet and say one's prayers - certainly not merely the best, but the only things to do if one would be truly happy; but, ashamed of asking when I have received so much, the only form of prayer I would use would be a form of thanksgiving.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#31. Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk - real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what they still tried to hope?
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#32. Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#33. And there they were, arrived; and it was San Salvatore; and their suit-cases were waiting for them; and they had not been murdered.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#34. And then when I got home I burrowed about among my books, arranging their volumes and loving the feel of them.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#35. Humility, and the most patient perseverance, seem almost as necessary in gardening as rain and sunshine, and every failure must be used as a stepping-stone to something better.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#37. What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#38. 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.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#39. Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#41. Here was the world wide-awake and yet only for me, all the fresh pure air only for me, all the fragrance breathed only by me, not a living soul hearing the nightingale but me, the sun in a few moments coming up to warm only me.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#42. I'm sure it's wrong to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can see you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#43. Oh well, I'll be sure to pick you up again somewhere. It isn't a very big island, and you are a conspicuous object, driving round it.' This was true. So long as I was on that island I could not hope to escape Charlotte. I entered Binz in a state of moody acquiescence. Every
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#44. But it's fun being alive, isn't it? I feel as if I'd only got to stretch up my hands to all those stars and catch as many of them as I want to.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#45. They left off talking. They ceased to mention heaven. They were just cups of acceptance.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#47. Fortunately, though she was hungry, she didn't mind missing a meal. Life was full of meals. They took up an enormous proportion of one's time.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#48. Mr. Dawson's wife was really so very meek that I fear when the Day of Reckoning comes much of this tyranny will be forgiven him and laid to her account.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#49. He had the effect on her of a window being thrown open and fresh air and sunlight being let in
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#51. The passion for being for ever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. I can entertain myself quite well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I have been alone at all.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#52. Oh how warm it makes one to know that there is one person in the world to whom one is everything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvelous possession.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#54. ...so I took it out with me into the garden, because the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#55. He had no idea that he never went out of the house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like a little echo of finished love, round that once dear head
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#57. At night the bottom of the valley looks like water, and the lamps in the little town lying along it like quivering reflections of the stars.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#58. The very feel of her hand, even through its glove, was reassuring; it was the sort of hand, he thought, that children would like to hold in the dark.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#59. 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.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#60. Perhaps,' she said, leaning forward a little, 'you will tell me your name. If we are to be friends' - she smiled her grave smile - 'as I hope we are, we had better begin at the beginning.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#61. Oh, I thought of calling it Journeyings in Germany. It sounds well, and would be correct. Or Jottings from German Journeyings
I haven't quite decided yet ... (Minora)
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#62. But whether it was a proper shame for what she had done or a shocking shame for her compunctions in sinning, the Bishop was not permitted that afternoon to discover; because when she had got as far as that she was interrupted by being obliged to faint.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#64. Once more she had that really rather disgusting suspicion that her life till now had not only been loud but empty.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#65. She herself had certainly never been more alive. She felt electric. She would not have been surprised if sparks had come crackling out of the tips of her sober gloves.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#66. Nobody could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she was too evidently shining.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#67. To me this out-of-the way corner was always a wonderful and a mysterious place, where my castles in the air stood close together in radiant rows, and where the strangest and most splendid adventures befell me; for the hours I passed in it and the people I met in it were all enchanted.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#68. To go into the garden in its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity. The first breath on opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes me gasp, and I feel a black and sinful object in the midst of all the spotlessness.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#69. A good thing this was, and that we should be so care-free and irresponsible, enjoying every minute of every day; for it was the Easter of 1914, the last Easter of the old, easy world, and our last, as well as our first, Easter as children together in the little house I had built for happiness.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#70. But there are no men here," said Mrs. Wilkins, "so how can it be improper? Have you noticed," she inquired of Mrs. Fisher, who endeavoured to pretend she did not hear, "How difficult it is to be improper without men?
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#71. One should continue (of course with dignity) to develop, however old one may be. She had nothing against developing, against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive one was not dead -obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change, ripening, were life.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#72. if one were efficient one wouldn't be depressed, and that if one does one's job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#73. It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the very most beautiful things in life.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#74. You are all the happiness," he said, with an energy of conviction astonishing at half-past nine in the morning, "and all the music, and all the colour, and all the fragrance there is in the world.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#75. She made him think of his mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting, besides having the attraction of not being his mother or his nurse.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#76. 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.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#77. How they had dreamed together, he and she ... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#78. If you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is next to impossible to unbore him.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#79. This radiant weather, when mere living is a joy, and sitting still over the fire out of the question, has been going on for more than a week.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#80. She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#81. She belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a ressurection of beauty there is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#83. I do
sincerely trust that the benediction that is always
awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more
deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and
patience, and cheerfulness, just like the happy
flowers I so much love.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#84. And everybody will have what they never yet have had, a certain amount of that priceless boon, leisure
leisure to sit down and look at themselves, and inquire what it is they really mean, and really want, and really intend to do with their lives.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#85. In the eighties, when she chiefly flourished, husbands were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin. Beds too, if they had to be mentioned, were approached with caution; and a decent reserve prevented them and husbands ever being spoken of in the same breath.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#86. Nor would I willingly miss the early darkness and the pleasant firelight tea and the long evenings among my books.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#87. Many are the friendships that have found an unforseeen and sudden end on a journey, and few are those that survive it.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#88. In this part of the world, the more you are pleased to see a person, the less is he pleased to see you; whereas if you are disagreeable, he will grow pleasant visibly, his countenance expanding into wider amiability the more your own is stiff and sour.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#89. Things were a little untidy, but what did that matter? It was possible to become the slave of things; possible to miss life in preparation for living.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#90. The only thing to do with one's old sorrows is to tuck them up neatly in their shroud and turn one's face away from their grave towards what is coming next.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#91. Christopher loved her with the passion of youth, of imagination, of poetry, of all the fresh beginnings of wonder and worship that have been since love first lit his torch and made in the darkness a great light.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#93. She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a pug dog's tail.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#94. 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.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#95. What fun it all was, she thought, and how entirely new and delicious being taken care of as though she were a thing that mattered, a precious thing!
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#96. Well, she had had the most wonderful summer; she had got that anyhow tucked away up the sleeve of her memory, and could bring it out and look at it when the days were wet and she felt cold and sick.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#97. The longer I live the greater is my respect for manure in all its forms.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#98. 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.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#99. It is true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usually liked everybody most when they weren't there.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#100. If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
