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a9af2df
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What a blessing it is to love books.
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reading
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f1c20ad
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But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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065904a
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Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e24782e
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I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.
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soul
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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168ef41
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What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.
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words
literature
reading
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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2be9c5c
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Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.
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travel
walking
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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0e7d53c
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If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.
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sleep
unkindness
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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4f90956
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He had the effect on her of a window being thrown open and fresh air and sunlight being let in
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lovely
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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cc8a89b
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Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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af5c4ec
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How they had dreamed together, he and she... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry.
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poetry
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f7299fb
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On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of the forest, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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9323d5c
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Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.
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words
literature
reading
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ace1f3f
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Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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78d948d
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I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun. I have heard the..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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82e4e49
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The passion for being for ever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. I can entertain myself quite well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I have been alone at all.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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7bd35ca
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I'm sure it's wrong to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can see you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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9a6c611
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When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ba2d2ef
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September 15th. - This is the month of quiet days, crimson creepers, and blackberries; of mellow afternoons in the ripening garden; of tea under acacias instead of too shady beeches; of wood fires in the library in chilly evenings.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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d563034
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If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations...don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.
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spirit
inspirational
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ea7905b
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Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair.
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soul
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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15d25b3
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Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one's mind was a paramount duty.
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reading
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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169224a
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It is true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usually liked everybody most when they weren't there.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e646810
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What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look upon it as imprisonment, and I don't know what besides, and would rend the air with their shrieks if condemned to such a life. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so easily. I believe I should always be good if the sun always shone, and..
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nature
simple-pleasures
gardens
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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85f93eb
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Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ecaf729
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How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again - not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organisation, but privately important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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2b7f2f5
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She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump.
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words
literature
mind
reading
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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13cdfed
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Love is not a thing you can pick up and throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in..
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trust
love
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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c6a44f6
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She belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a ressurection of beauty there is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart.
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hope
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f4895cf
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Upon my word," thought Mrs. Fisher, "the way one pretty face can turn a delightful man into an idiot is past all patience."
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pretty-face
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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fbff1c7
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Not the least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbour. If you have to have neighbours at all, it is at least a mercy that there should be only one; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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b3d9059
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Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs, - useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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0bf16e2
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All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was wistaria. . . . she remembered the advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums,..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ad71f7a
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I wish,' said Rose anxiously, 'I understood you.' 'Don't try,' said Lotty, smiling. 'But I must, because I love you.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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8f1bda4
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Here was the world wide-awake and yet only for me, all the fresh pure air only for me, all the fragrance breathed only by me, not a living soul hearing the nightingale but me, the sun in a few moments coming up to warm only me.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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0c6712c
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In bed by herself: adorable condition.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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92b0f89
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But there are no men here," said Mrs. Wilkins, "so how can it be improper? Have you noticed," she inquired of Mrs. Fisher, who endeavoured to pretend she did not hear, "How difficult it is to be improper without men?"
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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582af08
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He had no idea that he never went out of the house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like a little echo of finished love, round that once dear head
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prayer
love
silent-love
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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aa26bdd
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Always being there was the essential secret for a wife.
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wifely-duty
wife
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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6a905c4
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For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.
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solitude
loneliness
escape
spirit
fear
hope
london
soul
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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d788f54
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A house,' said Wemyss, explaining its name to Lucy on the morning of their arrival, 'should always be named after whatever most insistently catches the eye.' 'Then oughtn't it to have been called The Cows?' asked Lucy; for the meadows round were strewn thickly as far as she could see with recumbent cows, and they caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow branches. 'No,' said Wemyss, annoyed. 'It ought not have been called The Co..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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acafe99
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I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather.
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wry-humor
weather
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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79e7b31
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It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the very most beautiful things in life.
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helping-others
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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3f134a5
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but it's fun being alive, isn't it? I feel as if I'd only got to stretch up my hands to all those stars and catch as many of them as I want to.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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a225b8a
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Thoreau has been my companion for some days past, it having struck me as more appropriate to bring him out to a pond than to read him, as was hitherto my habit, on Sunday mornings in the garden. He is a person who loves the open air, and will refuse to give you much pleasure if you try to read him amid the pomp and circumstance of upholstery; but out in the sun, and especially by this pond, he is delightful, and we spend the happiest hours ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |