Eustace and Hilda Quotes

“The future was to be a laborious business.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“He was surrounded by tyrants who thought they had a right to order him about: it was a conspiracy. He could not call his soul his own.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“And everyone assured him that he would never be a man until he learned how to drive. Indeed, the future was already dull and menacing with the ambitions other people entertained on his behalf.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“How little he knew about the rules of this world which he had crashed against so casually, like a moth bumping against a light!”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“Indeed, Hilda was always putting her oar in, constituting herself the voice of conscience; she was a task-mistress, leading the chorus, undefined, unrecognised, but clearly felt, of those who thought he ought to try more, do more, be more, than he had it in him to try, or do, or be.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“   "Will you, as they say, say when?" he asked, standing at Eustace's elbow with the whisky decanter and a glass.
   "Stop, stop I've got to sit up and do some work when I get back."
   "Work, work, the word is always on your lips, Eustace, but I never see you doing any, I'm glad to say."
   "I put it away when you come, of course," said Eustace. "I take it out when Hilda comes."
   "I think I shall send for her."   ”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“How terrifyingly efficient she sounds," said Stephen. "I think I should faint in her presence.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“For a moment Eustace contemplated an existence spent in pleasing himself. How would he set about it? He had been told by precept, and had learned from experience, that the things he did to please himself usually ended in making other people grieved and angry, and were therefore wrong. Was he to spend his life in continuous wrong-doing, and in making other people cross? There would be no pleasure in that. Indeed what pleasure was there, except in living up to people's good opinion of him?”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“   "But she is very fond of you, anyone can see that."
   "Oh yes, she is. They all are. But—I don't know how it is—if they see me really happy—for long together, I mean—they don't seem to like it."   ”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“That afternoon marked more than one change in Eustace's attitude towards life. Physical ugliness ceased to repel him and conversely physical beauty lost some of its appeal.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“His habitual mood was one of fearful joy contending with a ragged cloud of nervous apprehensions, and accompanying this was a train of extremely intense sensations proceeding from well-known sounds and sights and smells.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

“It was delicious to be praised. A sense of luxury invaded Eustace's heart. Get on in the world...say nice things to people...he would remember that.”
― L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda