Nancy Mitford · 468 pages
Rating: (4.8K votes)
“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, and 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. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. '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 & Love in a Cold Climate
“The worst of being a Communist is the parties you may go to are - well - awfully funny and touching but not very gay...I don't see the point of sad parties, do you? And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“Oh! How like a woman," Davey said. "Sex, my dear Sadie, is not a sovereign cure for everything, you know. I only wish it were.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“Spring came late, but when it came it was hand-in-hand with summer, and almost at once everything was baking and warm, and in the villages the people danced every night on concrete dancing floors under the plane trees...”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“She...ran away so often, and with so many different people, that she became known to her family and friends as the Bolter....”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“The people welcome a new da yas if they were certain of liking it, the shopkeepers pull up their blinds serene in the expectation of good trade, the workers go happily to their work, the people who have sat up all night in night clubs go happily to their rest, the orchestra of motor-car horns, of clanking trams, of whistling policemen tunes up for the daily symphony, and everywhere is joy.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“Isn't it lovely to be lovely me!”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“There comes a point in life where each one of us who survives begins to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time, and certainly most of us were more amusing when we were young. It seems that age folds the heart in on itself. Some of us walk detached, dreaming on the past, and some of us realize that we have lost the trick of standing in the sun. For many of us the thought of the future is a cause for irritation rather than optimism, as if we have had enough of new things, and wish only for the long sleep that rounds the edges of our lives”
― Louis de Bernières, quote from Birds Without Wings
“Her face was a face to go with one through the years, and to live still in one's dreams when the sap of life is gone.”
― Harold Bell Wright, quote from The Shepherd of the Hills
“These be the sort" — she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her mouth with paan — "These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe, suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse than the pestilence. They do harm to kings.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. It’s poison every single time.”
― Addison Moore, quote from Ethereal
“If you’ve got a dozen pitchers, you need to speak 12 different languages.”
― Michael Lewis, quote from Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
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