Shroud for a Nightingale Quotes

“He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is."

Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?”
― P.D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale

“the”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“It was the face of a woman who had never learnt to come to terms with life,”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“She always did what was correct. Fallon did what was right.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“She thought that he was probably a man who could never imagine himself at a disadvantage in any company since he was secure in his private world, possessed of that core of inner self-esteem which is the basis of happiness.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“Certainly his was the infectious good nature of a man who necessarily finds the world an agreeable place since it contains himself.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“But he did grievously fear old age, mortal illness and disablement. He dreaded the loss of independence, the indignities of senility, the yielding up of privacy, the abomination of pain, the glimpses of patient compassion in the faces of friends who knew that their indulgences would not be claimed for long.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“I had to make a moral decision. If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise, you are insulting God as well as defying him, don't you think?”
― P.D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale

“Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’affraie’?”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“I haven’t anything to offer. There isn’t any help. We are all alone, all of us from the moment of birth until we die. Our past is our present and our future. We have to live with ourselves until there isn’t any more time left. If you want salvation look to yourself.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“Everyman’s death diminishes me.” But, of course, Doctor Donne.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“You feel sexy"
Dalgliesh gave the question serious attention.
"No. I'm too old to feel sexy when I'm cold and tired. At my age you need the creature comforts if you're to perform with any pleasure to your partner or credit to yourself.”
― P.D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale

“Miss Collins was here.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“Here was normality, sanity, a world she recognized and knew. This emotion, suspiciously like regret, at witnessing the violent destruction of Nightingale House was really too ridiculous”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“Vanity, Mr. Dalgliesh, is a surgeon’s besetting sin as subservience is a nurse’s. I’ve never yet met a successful surgeon who wasn’t convinced that he ranked only one degree lower than Almighty God. They’re all infected with hubris.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“She looked satisfied, almost triumphant, as if something she suspected had been confirmed. I don’t know why I noticed that, but I did.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“a blasphemous liturgy of reassurance and absolution. And how much easier both to give and to accept was”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“We can only begin to understand and forgive other people when we have learned to understand and forgive ourselves.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“The ability to know what you want to say and to say it in the minimum of appropriate words is as uncommon in policemen as in other members of the community.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“These things were better conducted in an operating theatre, shrouded and dignified by the paraphernalia of ritual surgery.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“Very attractive if one liked that blonde, rather feline prettiness. Smiling into the unresponsive violet-blue eyes, Miss Beale decided that some people, and not all of them men, might like it very much indeed.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“The twins are Maureen and Shirley Burt. Maureen is the elder by about two minutes and has the most freckles. Otherwise we don’t find it easy to tell them apart. Next to Maureen is Julia Pardoe. Christine Dakers is in one armchair and Diane Harper in the other. I’m Madeleine Goodale.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale

“Miss Beale had been introduced to the principal tutor, Miss Hilda Rolfe, and to a senior consultant surgeon, Mr. Stephen Courtney-Briggs. She knew both by reputation.”
― P.D. James, Shroud For A Nightingale