Father Quotes

“No one ever said aloud any of the kinds of things he was so constantly thinking, because no one in the parish, not Alice, not Lady Higgs, not anybody, ever seemed to see the things he saw. If they thought as he did, if they saw what he did, they never mentioned it; and to have things which are precious to one eternally unmentioned makes one, he had long discovered, lonely. These August nights, for instance—remarkably and unusually beautiful, warm and velvety as he had never known them, ushered in each evening by the most astonishing variety of splendid sunsets—nobody had said a single word about them. They might have been February ones, for all the notice they got. Sometimes he climbed up to the top of Burdon Down towards evening, and stood staring in amazement at what looked like heaven let loose in flames over England; but always he stood alone, always there was no one but himself up there, and no one afterwards, when he descended from his heights, seemed to be aware that anything unusual had been going on.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“...listening with absorbed attention more to her voice than to what she was saying, and thinking how like she was, flowering through her voice into beauty in the darkness, to some butterflies he had come across in the Swiss mountains the summer before. When they were folded up they were grey, mothlike creatures that one might easily overlook, but directly they opened their wings they became the loveliest things in the world, all rose-colour or heavenly blue. So had she been to him in the daylight that afternoon,—an ordinary woman, not in any way noticeable; but now listen to her, opening into beauty on the wings of her voice!”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“And they began to talk—at first in their ordinary voices, but soon dropping into undertones because of the beauty, the immense, absorbed, hushed beauty of the night, with the moon, a day past its full, beginning to sail over the top of Burton Down behind them, and part the apple-leaves with silver fingers. And presently they didn't even talk, but Sat quite still, just as if for years they had been easy friends, and together they watched the great yew-tree on the other side of the little sleeping garden brushing its dark and solemn head across the stars, and listened to the cry of an owl, floating somewhere very far away towards them on the silence.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“There came a moment, she imagined, in the lives of most unmarried daughters, and perhaps in other people's too, when they must either bolt or go permanently under.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Straordinario come ci si sente soli, laggiù nel profondo dell'animo, se manca un compagno di esultanze.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Aveva scoperto che lasciare non dette le cose che si ritenevano più preziose procurava un terribile senso di solitudine.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Crumpling up the paper object which some of the visitors called a serviette, and some a tablenapkin, the ones who called it a tablenapkin being much shocked at the ones who called it a serviette, and the ones who called it a serviette not even being aware that they thereby placed themselves irrevocably beyond the pale.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“She pushed yesterday, and everything in it, out of her mind, addressing herself, as the sensible should, wholly to the actual moment.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“What's the use of worrying? ...and settled down to enjoy staying where she was.

Much better enjoy what you had got, when by chance you had got it, instead of wasting time worrying because you ought really to be somewhere else.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“It was all quite easy and simple. No need to hustle, as she had been doing till dinner. An immense leisure was now to be hers for ever, and it was entirely her own silly fault if she upset it by rushing at things.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Sleep and food; they focussed everything. She must remember that. Next time anybody annoyed her, she would first go to sleep, and then eat eggs and bacon.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“For a great calm was now upon her, a delicious feeling of being new—as new and untouched as the fresh young morning itself. Sleep had held her in its arms, and smoothed out all yesterday's furrows. The night was gone, and out of its blackness had come this golden flower of day, with leaves rustling in the sun....”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Love—that was what a man wanted; needed; simply had to have. Kind love. Sweet, smiling, gracious love. In one's house like sunshine, filling it with light; in one's garden like roses, filling it with fragrance. Ah, how he could imagine it! How well he could imagine it, the sort of heaven there would be about a man all day—and all night too, if, by the blessing of God, one happened to have married Love.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“What a mercy it was that Alice was only his sister, and not his wife; for so at least, though he had to listen to her during the day, he hadn't got to during the night.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Alice, who measured the same from her neck to her waist back and front, and considered that so would all women if they were really good and attended to their duties, admired persons, he was aware, of a flat build. He didn't. He was quite sure that curves were comfortable things. All women should have them—curves, soft curves, curves against which one could lay one's head when tired of everything, and go to sleep.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Faced by the accomplished fact, it was really rather useless for him to mind. What was the good of minding the actual and the fininshed? ....to allow oneself to be upset because something had been done which one considers a pity, or even disastrous, is to double the misfortune. Why throw after what is already gone one's own good temper and serenity?”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father

“Those years in the back diningroom, like some dark tunnel through which one emerges into sunshine, had ended for her in glory. All the time she had been so miserable, she had really been heading straight for this. She was awestruck. Such great and unexpected blessings should bring forth fruit, she vowed, and she would show her gratitude by seeing to it that they did.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Father