Merry Hall Quotes

“Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“Well, I love geraniums, and anybody who does not love geraniums must obviously be a depraved and loathsome person.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“For a garden is a mistress, and gardening is a blend of all the arts, and if it is not the death of me, sooner or later, I shall be much surprised.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“...If you are picking a bunch of mixed flowers, and if you happen to see, over in a corner, a small, sad, neglected-looking pink or paeony that is all by itself and has obviously never had a chance in life, you have not the heart to pass it by, to leave it to mourn alone, while the night comes on. You have to go back and pick it, very carefully, and put it in the centre of the bunch among its fair companions, in the place of honour.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“It makes me happy to think that not one single suggestion of Our Rose's has ever been adopted. Needless to say, when the water garden was eventually made, she claimed that it was all her own idea, merely because of the 'gleam' which she had 'seen,' out on the bare earth, that desolate day in January. She even suggested that she should be photographed with it, stretching out her hands for a lily. But if Our Rose is ever photographed with my pool, she will be well inside it, and she will be stretching out her hands for help.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“By the way, the best place to find names for fictional characters, if you are ever foolish enough to write a novel, is in a Bradshaw or an ABC. All the nicest people always sound like railway stations.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“Into the room, with great dignity, stalked One and Four. They had mud on their paws, and they naturally decided to sit on my lap. They smelt of moss and loam, and they both set up a slow, tranquil purr. Cats, I thought, are the best.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“The Oldfields of the future are beyond hearing; they are shut up in the factories and the workshops, leading a rackety and mechanical existence, to the damage of their bodies and the peril of their souls, for the sake of an extra pound or so a week, which they promptly spend on mental or physical narcotics.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“Every leaf that taps against the attic window, every thorn that nestles against the bricks, is part of a barrier that keeps the twentieth century at bay. I have always taken a dim view of the twentieth century, so that I consider this to be a laudable amibition.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“...There are all sorts of people who will tell you that worms do not mind being cut in half at all because both halves go on living - that the worms laugh it off with an airy shrug of the shoulders, exclaiming 'Oh look! This funny man has cut me in half! How amusing! Now I can go away for a weekend with myself!”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“...the Indian boy is the result of a curious convolution of branches in an old chestnut; there are two perfectly formed legs, a long slim body, a small knotted head, and two branching arms... The only drawback is that in order to [see him] you have to be lying in the bath. Unless you are in a prone position, gazing out of one particular window, he refuses to materialize.... Very few other people have seen him. You cannot ask people to come up to the bathroom and lie flat on their backs in order to see the little Indian boy. It would make them gloomy and suspicious, particularly if they were females. 'If you come up and lie down in the bathroom I will show you my little Indian boy....' No. Definitely not. Out.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“...A thing that is worth doing at all is worth doing badly... le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“We have already noticed two of Our Rose's most irritating affectations - her trick of calling inanimate objects 'he' or 'she,' and the way in which she says 'we' when she means 'you.' To these must now be added a third - her habit of looking rapturously into space and saying 'I see' this or that when, in fact, there is nothing there for her to see at all.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“It is rather his mind has so wide a range, and so rich a retention, that he simply cannot understand that ordinary folk do not always follow him. 'I little imagined,' he said, 'that I should find you in the posture of Sir Isaac Newton.' Oh dear, I thought, here it comes again. What on earth was the meaning of *that*? So I just said No... and went fiddling with the oil-squirter, trying to remember things about Newton.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall

“...He was succeeded by a gentleman who gazed at the Brussels sprouts and asked if the funny little knobs on the stalks were a form of disease. I told him yes. Eczema.”
― Beverley Nichols, Merry Hall