Nancy Mitford > Quotes

“I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.”
― Nancy Mitford

“I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”
― Nancy Mitford

“If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.”
― Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

“Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married. When it isn't they blame the other person, which is clearly absurd. I believe that is what generally starts the trouble.”
― Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

“You've no idea how long life goes on and how many, many changes it brings. Young people seem to imagine that it's over in a flash, that they do this thing, or that thing, and then die, but I can assure you they are quite wrong.”
― Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels

“Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.”
― Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

“Sun, silence, and happiness.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. 'He was the great love of her life, you know.'
Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly. 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“The worst of being a Communist is the parties you may go to are - well - awfully funny and touching but not very gay...I don't see the point of sad parties, do you? And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.”
― Nancy Mitford

“Oh! How like a woman," Davey said. "Sex, my dear Sadie, is not a sovereign cure for everything, you know. I only wish it were.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“Oh dear... it really is rather disillusioning. When one's friends marry for money they are wretched, when they marry for love it is worse. What is the proper thing to marry for, I should like to know?”
― Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

“Mother, of course, takes a lot of exercise, walks and so on. And every morning she puts on a pair of black silk drawers and a sweater and makes indelicate gestures on the lawn. That's called Building the Body Beautiful. She's mad about it.”
― Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

“Do you always laugh when you make love?' said Fabrice.

I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I do. I generally laugh when I'm happy and cry when I'm not. Do you find it odd?”
― Nancy Mitford

“I have only ever read one book in my life, and that is White Fang. It's so frightfully good I've never bothered to read another.”
― Nancy Mitford

“Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“... it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can't bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago.”
― Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

“She was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, but it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“My dear Lady Kroesig, I have only read one book in my life, and that is ‘White Fang.’ It’s so frightfully good I’ve never bothered to read another.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“Spring came late, but when it came it was hand-in-hand with summer, and almost at once everything was baking and warm, and in the villages the people danced every night on concrete dancing floors under the plane trees...”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“Linda's presentation of the 'facts' had been so gruesome that the children left Alconleigh howling dismally, their nerves permanently impaired, their future chances of a sane and happy sex life much reduced.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“Women are divided into two categories: those who can deal with the men they are in love with, and those who cannot. Sophia was one of those who can.”
― Nancy Mitford, Pigeon Pie

“...indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves.”
― Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate

“the kentish week-enders on their way to church were appalled by the sight of four great hounds in full cry after two little girls. My uncle seemed to them like a wicked lord of fiction, and I became more than ever surrounded with an aura of madness, badness, and dangerousness for their children to know.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“It was furnished neither in good taste nor in bad taste, but simply with no attempt at taste at all...”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“At this Linda gave up. Children might or might not enjoy air-raids actually in progress, but a child who was not thrilled by the idea of them was incomprehensible to her, and she could not imagine having conceived such a being. Useless to waste any more time and breath on this unnatural little girl.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“To make matters worse, Linda, it appears, is madly in love with a monster of a Scotsman, who came to dinner last night in his kilt. Those hairy old knees decided us. "The Mountains I can bear," said Loudie. "Natives in the semi-nude at dinner time is another matter. I leave tomorrow.”
― Nancy Mitford, Highland Fling