An Accomplished Woman Quotes

“The stupidest people suddenly become a little cleverer when we learn that they think well of us”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“Probably no purer incitement to hatred existed, Lydia had found, than being told of anyone or anything: you will love him, her or it. The spirit immediately rose up like a fanged cobra.”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“I do not declare that I have no intention of marrying on any general principle. If I were to see the right man, no doubt I should eat my words with a ready appetite. The simple fact is, I have never seen him yet, and at the age of thirty, reason inclines me rather to conclude that he does not exist, than to persist in the belief that he is still somewhere to be found”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“Country picnics always sound nicer than they are. I think we should just have the idea of them, and be pleased with it, and then not go. The only true pleasures are indoors, artificial, and untainted with healthiness.”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“A balance, I think, is needed , " Dr. Templeton said judiciously,"between the head and the heart: nothing easier to say: nothing harder to achieve.”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“How odd that we always exclaim over children growing, as if in the ordinary run of things they shrink”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“Really, I protest--what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it?”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“I confess I found it somewhat insipid when I last went....it was all so prosy - so bonnety - so whisty and teacuppy - you see, the adjectives for it do not even exist, and I must invent them.”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“The tendency to late marriages may reflect nothing more than the growth of sense," Lewis Durant said, "At 21, a man seldom knows what he is doing, or where his best interests lie."
"I am glad you say a man, Mr. Durant, and exempt woman from this youthful imbecility," Lidia said.
"I do: a woman's imbecility is not dependent on youth: it flourishes at all ages.”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“the way the people closest to us are able so effortlessly to thrust us to the farthest distance”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“as one looks instinctively at the clock: that must be right. That will tell me where I am”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“It was perturbing to look long at your reflection: to realise that all the time you were there in the world, visible, undeniable”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“choice, Lydia reflected, was not a simple act. It depended not only on what you thought and felt, but on things you were quite unconscious of thinking and feeling, and to which only an outside agency could alert you. Choice implied a clear view of the object before the chooser: but whose view was not impeded, not smeared a little by the careless accretions of self? Surely to polish up that glass to perfect transparency was not to interfere with choice: really it was doing a service both to the chooser and to”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“There is no greater tyranny, Miss Rae, than convention”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“The advantage of a head, or mind or brain, is that it will be a resource and support to you in life,’ Lydia said crisply, ‘while the heart is liable chiefly to cause you pain”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“She had lived with the story as you live with a favourite book, which changes with you as you change and grow”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman