Cecil Quotes

“So very kind, but one feels a great need in the midst of sorrow to have one’s own people around one; that is why, selfishly perhaps, I begged you to come to me.’ She held out her hand.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“A great many subjects were touched on and left hanging in the air. I believe, although I do not know if she knew it herself, that she had evolved this oblique method of approach as a form of protection. If she said enough things how was anyone to know which one was really on her mind? And her auditor could thereby be induced to give his or her opinion on something without ever knowing whether or not it was important to her.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“People always do it,’ Cecil said. ‘I think the reason is that when one is ill one is apt to look much stupider than usual. The only hope of putting any sense into stupid people or foreigners is to shout at them, so one’s friends shout.’ I again said that I was sorry and Cecil said that he hadn’t meant to scold me in particular but had been considering human relations as they were concerned with sick visiting.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“in a voice which was much stronger than it had been earlier he begged me not to be so scared. ‘You look as if you had seen three ghosts and a street accident all at once and didn’t know what to do about any of them.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“Intensive preparations for the wedding started a full month before it was due to take place. It was to be in the grand manner, although of course big weddings were then much smaller affairs than they became later. In those days, although the custom was already beginning to change, people invited only their relations and more intimate friends to see them married and didn’t bother with persons whom they had only met once in their lives.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“The Manor, Old Windsor, (a curiously incongruous name and address for a house entirely Spanish in character) was looking very lovely when we drove up to it that morning. The sun was shining on its pale walls and the ‘shrubberies’—really, a beautifully laid-out plantation. The house, although rather near to a road, is perfectly secluded from it. The small park into which the plantation gradually recedes gives the whole a feeling of great spaciousness. I notice that I am writing as if it all still existed, but in fact I believe that after it was sold the land was cut up and that a number of houses were built on it. It seems very sad when once it was so perfect, and whenever I have subsequently been in the neighbourhood I have made a point of never going to see it and never driving in that direction.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“What dark secret could there possibly be in the boy’s life that would not be at least suspected by us? It was Lady Guthrie’s almost insane desire to possess her son and keep him for ever chained to her side that was so horrible.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“At luncheon I was relieved to see that Lady Guthrie had, for the time being anyhow, apparently decided to drop the role, she had threatened to assume earlier, of the always ailing mother. She was now talking away with great animation and some wit. If a role was involved it was clearly that of a sister anxious to appear to advantage in the eyes of a brother whom she greatly admired.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil

“North Lodge, Stanmore. Lady Anne Marsh who is going to marry Charlie arrived yesterday. She is five foot five inches tall, has fair hair and is not so pretty as Charlie said. At least that is what I think but Mama says one should not criticize.’ So that was how I appeared to the nine-year-old Cecil Guthrie.”
― Elizabeth Eliot, Cecil