Lady of Quality Quotes

“There is a worse tyranny than that of ill-treatment. It is the tyranny of tears, vapours, appeals to feelings of affection and of gratitude!”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“Yes, being burnt to the socket is her favourite pastime,’ he agreed. ‘She suffers from a mysterious complaint, undiscoverable, but apparently past cure. One of its strangest symptoms is to put her quite out of frame whenever she finds herself asked to do anything she doesn’t wish to do. She has been known to become prostrate at the mere thought of being obliged to attend some party which promised to be a very boring function. There’s no saying that she wouldn’t sink into a deep decline if I were to suggest to her that she should take charge of you, so I shan’t do it. I can’t have her death laid at my door.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“She wasn’t as foolish as her sister, but she had more hair than wit,”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“For a perilous moment, she hovered on the brink of losing her temper, but her ever- ready sense of the absurd came to her rescue, and instead of yielding to the impulse to come to points with him she broke into sudden laughter, and said: ‘How unhandsome of you to have given me such a set- down, when I had already begged your pardon!’ ‘How unjust of you to accuse me of giving you a set- down when all I did was to agree with you!’ he retorted.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“It is the tyranny of the weak, isn’t it? The weapons being tears, reproaches, vapours, and other such unscrupulous means which are employed by gentle, helpless women like your aunt!”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“For perhaps the only time in her life she was thankful to Miss Farlow for interrupting, even though Miss Farlow did so merely because she seldom missed an opportunity to give Lucilla a set-down. She said sharply: ‘A very odd thing it would be in your uncle if he were to leave Bath without taking leave of dear Miss Wychwood, to whom he has so much cause to be grateful! I am sure it isn’t wonderful that he should wish rather to see her than you, Miss Carleton, for gentlemen find girls only just out of the schoolroom excessively boring! Indeed, at your age I should never have expected a gentleman to wish to see me!’

Lucilla’s eyes flashed, and she replied swiftly: ‘How fortunate!”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“I must tell you that I shouldn’t – I trust! – have allowed my vexation to take such strong possession of me if my cousin Maria had not chosen that most unlucky moment to talk me almost to the gates of Bedlam!’

‘That doesn’t surprise me at all!’ he replied. ‘If I were forced to endure more than five minutes of her vapid gibble-gabbling there would be nothing for it but to cut my throat! Or hers,’ he added, apparently giving this alternative his consideration. ‘No, I think not: the jury, not having been acquainted with her, would probably find me guilty of murder. What shocking injustices are perpetrated in the name of the law! How the case of your cousin brings that home to one! She ought, of course, to have been strangled at birth, but I daresay her parents were wanting in foresight.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“I shall take leave to tell you, Carleton, that I find your – your wit offensive!’

‘By all means!’ replied Mr Carleton. ‘You have my leave to tell me anything you choose! How unjust it would be in me to refuse to grant you leave to do so when it has never occurred to me that I should ask your permission to say that I find you a dead bore, which I’ve been doing for years.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“Levity was ever your besetting sin,’ he said severely. ‘Let me tell you that it is not at all becoming in a female! It leads you into talking a deal of improper nonsense.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“You have persuaded yourself into the belief that you prefer to live alone– and that, if the alternative was to live with your brother and sister- in- law, is perfectly understandable. You have grown so much accustomed to your single state that to change it seems to you unthinkable. But you are thinking of it! That’s why your mind is all chaos. If you felt that to continue to live alone would be infinitely preferable to living with me, you would have refused to marry me without an instant’s hesitation. Was your mind thrown into chaos when Beckenham proposed to you? Of course it wasn’t! You regard him with indifference. But you don’t regard me with indifference! I’ve taken you by surprise, and I am threatening to turn your beautifully ordered life upside- down, and you don’t know whether you would like it or loathe it.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“No man who had the inestimable good fortune to call you his wife would ever desire any other woman. If you don’t know that, there is nothing I can do or say to convince you!”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“He does not, if you please, consider me a fit and proper person to have charge of Lucilla, and doesn’t scruple to say so! I’m told it is always so with loose- screws: they become downright prudes where the females of their own families are concerned! I imagine that must be because they know too much about the wiles of seducers– from their own experiences!”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“He was a very elegant young gentleman, of engaging address, and fashionable appearance. His glossy brown locks were brushed into the Windswept style; the points of his collar reached his cheek- bones; his neckcloth was fearfully and wonderfully tied;”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“No one had ill- treated her; she had been suffocated with loving kindness,”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“I should find that sort of thing most disconcerting! Manna, too! I’ve never been able to discover what kind of food that was, but I am persuaded I shouldn’t like it, even if I were starving, and it was suddenly dropped on me, which I think extremely unlikely.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“Only one lady saw any impropriety in it, and as she was notoriously spiteful, and had two rather plain daughters of marriageable age on her hands, no one paid any heed to her.”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“And as for agreeing with him, gentlemen are so much wiser than we are, and so much better able to judge of– of worldly matters– don’t you think?’

‘Emphatically, No!”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality

“Well of course it did and it would have made any man feel just as I did! I told Mama - perfectly politely! that it was enough to make me jump on the Bristol coach, and ship aboard the first packet bound for America, or anywhere else that Bristol boats sail to,because I would rather live in the Antipodes than have Cordelia hanging around my neck...”
― Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality