At Lady Molly's Quotes

“There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“His daughters had lived their early life in permanent disgrace for having, none of them, been born a boy.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“He suddenly began to look wretched, much as I had seen him look as a schoolboy: lonely: awkward: unpopular: odd; no longer the self-confident businessman into which he had grown. His face now brought back the days when one used to watch him plodding off through the drizzle to undertake the long, solitary runs across the dismal fields beyond the sewage farms: runs which were to train him for teams in which he was never included.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“People do grow up. At least some do.’
‘I am afraid Charles was not one of them,’ she said gravely. ‘He became a man, but he did not grow up. He is not grown up now.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Everyone knows the manner in which some specific name will recur several times in quick succession from different quarters; part of that inexplicable magic throughout life that makes us suddenly think of someone before turning a street corner and meeting him, or her, face to face. In the same way, you may be struck, reading a book, by some obscure passage or lines of verse, quoted again, quite unexpectedly, twenty-four hours later.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they’ll marry anybody.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“None of this seemed to be getting us much further so far as Widmerpool was concerned. I waited for development. General Conyers did not intend to be hurried. I suspected that he might regard this narrative he was unfolding in so leisurely a manner as the last good story of his life; one that he did not propose to squander in the telling. That was reasonable enough.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Lady Warminster represented to a high degree that characteristic of her own generation that everything may be said, though nothing indecorous discussed openly. Layer upon layer of wrapping, box after box revealing in the Chinese manner yet another box, must conceal all doubtful secrets; only the discipline of infinite obliquity made it lawful to examine the seamy side of life. If these mysteries were observed everything might be contemplated: however unsavoury: however unspeakable.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Of this crisis in my life, I remember chiefly a sense of tremendous inevitability, a feeling that fate was settling its own problems, and too much reflection would be out of place.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“I passed through empty streets, thinking that I, too, should be married soon, a change that presented itself in terms of action rather than reflection, the mood in which even the most prudent often marry: a crisis of delight and anxiety, excitement and oppression.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“In due course one learns, where individuals and emotions are concerned, that Time’s slide-rule can make unlikely adjustments.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when I set eyes on Isobel Tolland, I knew at once that I should marry her? Something like that is the truth; certainly nearer the truth than merely to record those vague, inchoate sentiments of interest of which I was so immediately conscious. It was as if I had known her for many years already; enjoyed happiness with her and suffered sadness. I was conscious of that, as of another life, nostalgically remembered. Then, at that moment, to be compelled to go through all the paraphernalia of introduction, of ‘getting to know’ one another by means of the normal formalities of social life, seemed hardly worth while. We knew one another already; the future was determinate.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“I forgot at the time that this inability to penetrate a room is a particular form of hesitation to be associated with persons in whom an extreme egoism is dominant: the acceptance of someone else’s place or dwelling possibly implying some distasteful abnegation of the newcomer’s rights or position.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Most individual approaches to love, however unexpected, possess a logic of their own; for only by attempting to find some rationalisation of love in the mind can its burdens easily be borne. Sentiment and power, each in their way, supply something to feed the mind, if not the heart. They are therefore elements operated often to excess by persons in temperament unable to love at all, yet at the same time unwilling to be left out of the fun, or to bear the social stigma of living emotionally uninteresting lives.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“His manner of asking personal questions was of that kind not uncommonly to be found which is completely divorced from any interest in the answer. He was always prepared to embark on a lengthy cross-examination of almost anyone he might meet, at the termination of which—apart from such details as might chance to concern himself—he had absorbed no more about the person interrogated than he knew at the outset of the conversation. At the same time this process seemed somehow to gratify his own egotism.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“I found later that she was indeed what is called ‘a tease’, perhaps the only outward indication that her inner life was not altogether happy; since there is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and sensational, played to an audience of one.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“For my own part, I always enjoy hearing the details of other people’s lives, whether imaginary or not, so that I found this side of Lovell agreeable.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Lady Warminster represented to a high degree that characteristic of her own generation that everything may be said, though nothing indecorous discussed openly.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“At the same time, the notion that he was entirely actuated by ‘rational’ motives was also no doubt far from the truth. He was possibly not ‘in love’, but at the same time impelled by feelings, if less definable than ‘love’, no less powerful. It was perhaps his imagination which had been captured; which is, after all, something akin to love. Who can say? Mrs. Haycock turned a dazzling smile upon us.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“He stood pondering this flat, forthright declaration of anti-simianism on Miss Weedon’s part. The notion that some people might not like monkeys was evidently entirely new to him; surprising, perhaps a trifle displeasing, but at the same time one of those general ideas of which one can easily grasp the general import without being necessarily in agreement. It was a theory that startled by its stark simplicity.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's

“Since Quiggin’s books remained purely hypothetical entities, it seemed reasonable enough that their publisher should exist hypotheticaliy too. I was tempted to say as much, but thought it wiser to avoid risk of discord at this early stage.”
― Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's