Quotes from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement

Anthony Powell ·  715 pages

Rating: (1.2K votes)


“She glided away towards the lift, which seemed hardly needed, with its earthly and mechanical paraphernalia, to bear her up to the higher levels.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“In fact, she [Pamela Flitton] seemed to prefer 'older men' on the whole, possibly because of their potentiality for deeper suffering. Young men might superficially transcend their seniors in this respect, but they probably showed less endurance in sustaining that state, while, once pinioned, the middle-aged could be made to writhe almost indefinitely.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“There could be no doubt, so I was finally forced to decide, that the longer one dealt with them, the more one developed the habit of treating generals like members of the opposite sex; specifically, like ladies no longer young, who therefore deserve extra courtesy and attention; indeed, whose every whim must be given thought.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“Jeavon's thick dark hair, with its ridges of corkscrew curls, had now turned quite white, the Charlie Chaplin moustache remaining black. This combination of tones for some reason gave him an oddly Italian appearance, enhanced by blue overalls, obscurely suggesting a railway porter at a station in Italy.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement



“Esteem for the army - never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of the national will - implies a kind of innocence.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“The army is at once the worst place for egoists, and the best.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demonstrate that you did it better than someone else. If it came to that, I thought how few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“Bring a torch, if you've got one. It's as dark as hell and stinks of something far worse than cheese.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“Entering the front door, you were at once assailed by a nightmare of cheerlessness and squalor, all the sordid melancholy, at its worst, of any nest of bedrooms where only men sleep;”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement



“His woolly grey hair, short thick body, air of perpetual busyness, suggested an industrious gnome conscripted into the service of the army; a gnome who also liked to practise considerable malice against the race of men with whom he mingled, by making as complicated as possible every transaction they had to execute through himself.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


“Short, square, cleanshaven, his head seemed carved out of an elephant's tusk, the whole massive cone of ivory left more or less complete in its original shape, eyes hollowed out deep in the roots, the rest of the protuberance accommodating his other features, terminating in a perfectly colossal nose that stretched directly forward from the totally bald cranium. The nose was preposterous, grotesque, slapstick, a mask from a Goldoni comedy.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement


About the author

Anthony Powell
Born place: in Westminster, The United Kingdom
Born date December 21, 1905
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Kmart special over here--one bad man with a stocking over his head, holding up a night crawler with a wallet. Give me your gun, buster.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from Thr3e


“I don't have so many friends that I can afford to turn my back on any of them.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Terrier


“He did say I fascinated him, but he really should have clarified to me that I was just the fascination for the day.”
― Abbi Glines, quote from Breathe


“There are enough cowards in the world without killing a brave creature for so little reason.”
― Brian Jacques, quote from Mossflower


“food production was indirectly a prerequisite for the development of guns, germs, and steel. Hence geographic variation in whether, or when, the peoples of different continents became farmers and herders explains to a large extent their subsequent contrasting fates.”
― Jared Diamond, quote from Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies


Interesting books

The Devil's Right Hand
(5.1K)
The Devil's Right Ha...
by Lilith Saintcrow
Dark Lord of Derkholm
(12.9K)
Dark Lord of Derkhol...
by Diana Wynne Jones
It Does Not Die
(1.6K)
It Does Not Die
by Maitreyi Devi
A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
(3.2K)
A Fortune-Teller Tol...
by Tiziano Terzani
The Lost Heiress
(2.9K)
The Lost Heiress
by Roseanna M. White
The Silent Waters
(12.9K)
The Silent Waters
by Brittainy C. Cherry

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.