The Semi-Detached House Quotes

“I like a good murder that can't be found out. That is, of course it is very shocking, but I like to hear about it.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Mrs. Douglas; and altogether the lady was in a better disposition towards the Eskdales than she had been before the election. She had missed them as objects of observation, and had wanted somebody to find fault with.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Ever, while you live, choose the popular side in an election; that is, if you have no particular political prejudices of your own; for there is no comparison between a reception of cheers, applause, and good-will, and one of cabbage-stalks, groans, and bad eggs. Besides, there is something exhilarating in the real, genuine affection (while it lasts) of a mob for their favourite of a day.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Now, my dear Mr. Douglas, don't go off on those tiresome foreign affairs. What can it signify which conquers which, or who dethrones who, at that distance? Let them fight it out quietly. Besides, you need not pretend to understand national feuds if you have not found out what is passing under your eyes;”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“MY DEAREST SARAH, "I would give anything for a good hour's talk with you. You have not told me half enough about Mr. Wentworth, and that walk to the Mill, and your fit of dignity about the music book. It is so interesting, and quite as amusing as one of Miss Austen's novels; and this is all true, and your happiness is concerned in it; so you may guess how I pore over your letters. If he does not propose soon, I shall think he is behaving very ill, and shall hate him; but I know he will. We go on very happily here; at least, I hope dear Helen is happy; but I do not feel quite sure.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Oh, I heard enough of her when I lived chambermaid with the Stuarts: they say she has no more respect for Lord Portmore than she has for the hearth-broom; and that all she is at from morning to night is to catch up admirers; and she don't care for other people's husbands being other people's husbands, but likes all the better to make them follow her. And that is just the sort of lady who says poor servants ain't to have any followers at all not even to keep company. I have no patience with her and if I was my lady, I should look after her pretty sharp with my lord." "These”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Nothing of my husband, Lady Portmore," said Helen, firmly. "Mamma told me that married people were never, under any circumstances, to make each other the subjects of discussion or comment; so tell me nothing of Lord Teviot." Lady Portmore was completely defeated, and it seemed to her quite marvellous that such a child as Helen should presume to withstand and baffle her. But even she could not renew a conversation so pointedly interrupted, and after settling her plans for the afternoon, and advising Helen to have her sapphires reset with more diamonds, she left the room, saying as she passed–”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“What am I to give the housemaids here? and do you object to my reading novels, if Lady Eskdale says there is no harm in them? They look very tempting, particularly one called Pride and Prejudice.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“The evening passed away better than Helen had expected. Lord Teviot's gallop had put him into better humour; and Helen's spirits rose when she was dressed for dinner. I have often observed that the petty vexations and worries of the early part of the day are taken off and folded neatly up with the morning gown; and a fresh fit of spirits and good-humour put on with the evening adornments. It is a change for the better, personally and mentally.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from trifles springs– Oh! let the ungentle spirit learn from thence A small unkindness is a great offence.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Oh, mamma!" said Eliza, "I wish you would not say that; and I wish they would ask us constantly to their house. It is very odd, that though I feel afraid of everybody all the time, there is nothing I like so much as dining there. And I am sure, mamma, it would be very good for my manner, which you say is so unformed at home. Before I have crossed the hall at Eskdale Castle I feel quite refined," she said, laughing. Mrs. Douglas laughed too, for though she rarely lost any opportunity of speaking malevolently of her neighbours' children, she was very much disposed to admire her own. And her own misanthropy found a pleasant relief in Eliza's enjoyable views of life.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Mrs. Douglas could hardly do less than make a very great grievance of what was intended as a kindness. She hated a wedding; it was just the sort of thing that the world chose to make a fuss about, but which she thought the most uninteresting ceremony on earth. She did not see why she was to dress herself out in satin and blonde just to go and hear two young people make foolish promises that they never could keep. What could be more absurd than to assemble a crowd to witness a man and woman promising to love each other for the rest of their lives, when we know what human creatures are,–men so thoroughly selfish and unprincipled, women so vain and frivolous?”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Well, if Helen were not one of that family, I should not dislike her. She is civil enough, and promised to show the girls her trousseau; but she is altered too. I think her looking dreadfully old, Mr. Douglas." "Old at eighteen, Anne! what wrinkled wretches we must be! Has Helen grown gray?" "No; but you know what I mean: she looks so set-up, so fashioned. In short, it does not signify, but she is altered." Mr. Douglas had his suspicions that Helen must have been looking beautiful, since even his wife could not detect, or at least specify, the faults that were to be found in her appearance. He had seldom seen her so much at fault for a criticism. Mrs. Douglas had never had the slightest pretensions to good looks; in fact, though it is wrong to say anything so ill-natured, she was excessively plain, always had been so, and had a soreness on the subject of beauty, that looked perhaps as like envy as any other quality.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“What! another love story? My dear Blanche, I hope you are not going to turn into a match-maker; of all the dangerous manufactories in the world, that is the worst, and the most unsatisfactory.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Oh dear! how unamiable I am when I am with my uncle and aunt," thought Rachel, "thoroughly detestable I may say, and yet when I am with those girls, or little Charlie, I can be as good as gold, and so tame that that baby can lead me; I do believe evil qualities are more catching than measles.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Oh! where is Truth? am I never to find it? I can bear artifice in the frivolities and gauds of the world–it is all artificial in itself, all heartless–but sorrow should be as true as it is sacred. Falseness there appals and disgusts me.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Why, just what the Quaker said to the Duchess of Buckingham, when he found her, two years after her husband's death, in a darkened room, hung with black, 'What, friend, hast thou not forgiven God Almighty yet?”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“The girls were full of pity and admiration, and affirmed that when their mother understood Rachel a little better she would like her. "My dears, I had much better like her at once, if you wish it; for if I wait till I understand her, I shall just be uncharitable for the rest of my days. I never know whether she is talking prose or poetry, or sense or nonsense; but as you say she is very much to be pitied, I pity her with all my heart. But when she comes to call upon you, I think she had better be shown up to your own room at once.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“And it seems there is such a grand murder in the paper–you must find it and read it to me, girls; a whole family poisoned by the father–just think of John poisoning us at breakfast, or, indeed, of his meddling with my tea-pot; and Lord Chester and Dr. Ayscough said such clever things about poisons; I thought I would remember them for fear of accidents; but I am not quite certain whether I have not forgotten part. However, I know it is not wholesome to take strychnine in any great quantity, so mind that, girls; arsenic, which is very apt to get into puddings and gruel, should be avoided, and you should take something after it, if you do swallow any–but I forget what. It was really very interesting, and I like a good murder that can't be found out; that is, of course, it is very shocking, but I like to hear about it.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“The two sisters were excited by this style of conversation. It had never come into their minds to analyze life. They took it as it came, and to them it came happily; and the idea that a young prosperous handsome woman should drop in for a morning visit and mention casually that her life was an entire failure, either for use or enjoyment, was so novel and startling that they hardly knew how to deal with it. They were induced to adopt their usual resource, and to call to mamma to come and rectify the disastrous state of Miss Monteneros' existence.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“A dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed.'" "But why not employ them?" said Rose, who was not learned in Byron; "you have a home." "Such as it is." "And relations.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“To those who are not, like Wordsworth's primrose, "dwellers on the river's brim," it may be necessary to explain that an outrigger is an apology for a boat, and, apparently, a feeble imitation of a plank–that the individual who hazards his own life in it is happily prevented, by its absurd form, from making any other person a sharer in his danger–that he is liable to be overset by any passing steamer, or by the slightest change of his own posture–that it is difficult to conceive how he ever got into such a thing, or how he is ever to get out of it again, and that the effect he produces on an unprejudiced spectator is that of an aquatic mouse caught in a boat-trap, from which he will never emerge alive, notwithstanding the continual struggle he appears to keep up.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“but there is always something suspicious, to my mind, in the little shrill hurrahs which are kept up by the youthful tea drinkers at intervals during the whole day, to say nothing of their being rather unmusical. It may not be so, but sometimes it appears as if the five or six charitable gentlemen in black coats and the equally charitable ladies in black gowns who conduct the festivity order the cheers as well as the cheer; and that the hurrahs are des houras de commande.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House

“Hopkinsons thought her a very fortunate young woman, and so she thought herself, till she found out that she had married a man who was by profession a grumbler. He had a passion for being a victim; when he was single, he grumbled for a wife, and when he had found a wife, he grumbled for the comforts of a bachelor. He grumbled for an heir to Columbia Lodge, and when the heir was born he grumbled because the child was frail and sickly. In short, he fairly grumbled poor gentle Mrs. Willis out of the world, and then grumbled at her for dying. But still her death was a gain to him. He took up the high bereaved line, was at all hours and in all societies the disconsolate mourner, wore a permanent crape round his hat, a rusty black coat in the city, and a shining one when he dined out. He professed himself "serious," and proved it by snubbing his friends when they were prosperous, and steadily declining to take the slightest interest in their adversities.”
― Emily Eden, The Semi-Detached House