Quotes from The Pursuit of Love

“Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“She was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, but it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“My dear Lady Kroesig, I have only read one book in my life, and that is ‘White Fang.’ It’s so frightfully good I’ve never bothered to read another.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“Linda's presentation of the 'facts' had been so gruesome that the children left Alconleigh howling dismally, their nerves permanently impaired, their future chances of a sane and happy sex life much reduced.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“Even if I take him out for three hours every day, and go and chat to him for another hour, that leaves twenty hours for him all alone with nothing to do. Oh, why can't dogs read?”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“It was furnished neither in good taste nor in bad taste, but simply with no attempt at taste at all...”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“There they are, held like flies in the amber of that moment—click goes the camera and on goes life; the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth, from the hopes Aunt Sadie must have had for them, and from the dreams they dreamed for themselves. I often think there is nothing quite so poignantly sad as old family groups.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“The charm of your writing,” Evelyn Waugh once wrote to Mitford, “depends on your refusal to recognize a distinction between girlish chatter and literary language.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“He was the great love of her life you know.'
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“One's emotions are intensified in Paris—one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“At this Linda gave up. Children might or might not enjoy air-raids actually in progress, but a child who was not thrilled by the idea of them was incomprehensible to her, and she could not imagine having conceived such a being. Useless to waste any more time and breath on this unnatural little girl.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“There they are, held like flies, in the amber of that moment...”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“Oh, the spectacles - I have to wear them when I go abroad, I have such kind eyes you see, beggars and things cluster round and annoy me.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“Just at the moment he's writing a book on famine - goodness! it's sad - and there's a dear little Chinese comrade who comes and tells him what famine is like, you never saw such a fat man in your life.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“The Radletts were always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair; their emotions were on no ordinary plane, they loved or they loathed, they laughed or they cried, they lived in a world of superlatives.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“the kentish week-enders on their way to church were appalled by the sight of four great hounds in full cry after two little girls. My uncle seemed to them like a wicked lord of fiction, and I became more than ever surrounded with an aura of madness, badness, and dangerousness for their children to know.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“They flourished and shone with jewels, lovely clothes, brilliant hair and dazzling complexions; when they danced they really did seem to float, except when it was the Charleston, and that, though angular, was so accomplished that it made us gasp with admiration. Their conversation was quite evidently both daring and witty, one could see it ran like a river, splashing, dashing, and glittering in the sun. Linda was entranced by them, and decided then and there that she would become one of these brilliant beings and live in their world, even if it took her a lifetime to accomplish.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“I have often noticed that when women look at themselves in every reflection, and take furtive peeps into their looking-glasses, it is hardly ever, as is generally supposed, from vanity, but much more often from a feeling that all is not quite as it should be”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“more interesting than white mice—though I must frankly say, of all the mice I ever knew, Brenda was the most utterly dismal.” “She was dull,” I said, sycophantically. “When I go to London”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“It could not be said, thought Linda, as the train pursued its way through the blackness, that her life so far had been a marked success. She had found neither great love nor great happiness, and she had not inspired them in others. Parting with her would have been no death blow to either of her husbands; on the contrary, they would both have turned with relief to a much preferred mistress, who was more suited to them in every way. Whatever quality it is that can hold indefinitely the love and affection of a man she plainly did not possess, and now she was doomed to the lonely, hunted life of a beautiful but unattached woman. Where now was the love that would last to the grave and beyond? What had she done with her youth? Tears for her lost hopes and ideals, tears of self-pity in fact, began to pour down her cheeks. The three fat French men who shared the carriage with her were in a snoring sleep, she wept alone.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

“I often think there is nothing quite so poignantly sad as old family groups.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love

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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.

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