The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Quotes

“She replied, “When you find a bike1 in a birk,2 busk3 there the bauk4.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

“When, in 1919, I was demobilized, I found that, as far as my work was concerned, my life was over – at the age of thirty-three. I was well off financially. I had leisure at my disposal. I had my copious notes. Perhaps – no doubt, in fact – it was a question of nerves. Whatever the reason, I can assure you that I was truly incapable of such concentrated hard work as that book would have required. I had lost interest in my subject and faith in myself. The result is that I am now an oldish man, of certain culture, I hope, but unproductive, an amateur and a dilettante. I know it. I despise myself for it, but I cannot help it. ‘And that, I am convinced, is more or less the story of hundreds of my contemporaries. ‘Everybody knows – you are at no pains to conceal it – that the young people of today despise and dislike the men and women of my age. I suppose that never since the world began have two generations been so much at variance. You think us superficial, narrow-minded, tasteless and sterile, and you are right. But who knows what we might have become if things had been different?”
― Nancy Mitford, The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

“Presently he gave her a cigarette and she began to blow the smoke through her nostrils like a horse in the cold weather.”
― Nancy Mitford, The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford