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06b0b21
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The years lay spread out before her, spacious untouched canvases on which she was presently going to paint the picture of her life. It was to be a very beautiful picture, she said to herself with an extraordinary feeling of proud confidence; not beautiful because of any gifts or skill of hers, for never was a woman more giftless, but because of all the untiring little touches, the ceaseless care for detail, the patient painting out of mista..
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happiness
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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21907f9
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Nor would I willingly miss the early darkness and the pleasant firelight tea and the long evenings among my books.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f525412
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My step-mother looked at me at least once on each of these miserable days, and said: 'Rose-Marie, you look very odd. I hope you are not going to have anything expensive. Measles are in Jena, and also the whooping-cough.' 'Which of them is the cheapest?' I inquired. 'Both are beyond our means,' said my step-mother severely.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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810200f
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And when I'm with you," she said, "I feel as if I were stuffed with--oh, with stars."
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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2c5650e
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She was having a violent reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one, her experience being that the instant one had got them they took one in hand and gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You didn't take your clothes to parties; they took you. It was quite a mistake to think think that a woman, a really well-dressed woman wore out her clothes; it was the clothes that wore out ..
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women
social-pressure
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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27ec9af
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so I took it out with me into the garden, because the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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4441efb
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There is nothing so absolutely bracing for the soul as the frequent turning of one's back on duties.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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b7bf878
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This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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080c4ad
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Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of a husband.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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dd2def8
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The very feel of her hand, even through its glove, was reassuring; it was the sort of hand, he thought, that children would like to hold in the dark.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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dcabe5d
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She made him think of his mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting, besides having the attraction of not being his mother or his nurse.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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8ce32a0
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One went on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful day when the coverings were going to be dropped and one would see it was death after all, that it had been death all the time, death pretending, death waiting
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f9e07ba
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There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.
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risk
love
safety
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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d539179
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all forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one for keeping the foolish from applying their hearts to wisdom.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f8a2901
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What fun it had been, having an admirer even for that little while. No wonder people liked admirers. They seemed, in some strange way, to make one come alive.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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7c2ab8b
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Happy? Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how could one describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself, it was as though she were too small to hold so much of joy, it was as though she were washed through with light. And how astonishing to feel this sheer bliss, for here she was, not doing and not going to do a single unselfish thing, not going to do a thing she didn't want to do. ... Now she had take..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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b0a3269
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I's lonely to stay inside oneself.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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1ad2762
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And there they were, arrived; and it was San Salvatore; and their suit-cases were waiting for them; and they had not been murdered.
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Elizabeth Von Arnim |
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18b66e1
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Beauty made you love, love made you beautiful.... She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn't want to grow sentimental. Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings--feelings one couldn't manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnifi..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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86083dd
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Humility, and the most patient perseverance, seem almost as necessary in gardening as rain and sunshine, and every failure must be used as a stepping-stone to something better.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ec57edf
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I was for ever making plans, and if nothing came of them, what did it matter? The mere making had been a joy.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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dc4357e
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Nobody could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she was too evidently shining.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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403cf2f
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The passion of being forever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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c37df73
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In the evening, when everything is tired and quiet, I sit with Walt Whitman by the rose beds and listen to what that lonely and beautiful spirit has to tell me of night, sleep, death, and the stars. This dusky, silent hour is his; and this is the time when I can best hear the beatings of that most tender and generous heart.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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fd8d06c
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But down from the end of the path it looked so charming that she wished she could paint it in watercolours--the great trees, the tempered sunlight, the glimpse of the old church at one end, the glimpse of the embosomed lake at the other, and in the middle, set out so neatly, with such a grace of spotlessness, the table of her first tea-party.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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be04b80
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Mrs. Fisher had never cared for macaroni, especially not this long, worm-shaped variety. She found it difficult to eat--slippery, wriggling off her fork, making her look, she felt, undignified when, having got it as she supposed into her mouth, ends of it yet hung out. Always, too, when she ate it she was reminded of Mr. Fisher. He had during their married life behaved very much like macaroni. He had slipped, he had wriggled, he had made he..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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058b57a
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I don't believe there was ever anybody who loved being happy as much as I did. What I mean is that I was so acutely conscious of being happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn't ever bored, and was always and continuously grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of the world.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e3b7cf8
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Well, she had had the most wonderful summer; she had got that anyhow tucked away up the sleeve of her memory, and could bring it out and look at it when the days were wet and she felt cold and sick.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f7942a2
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Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was--the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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d9a10f4
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Life is an admirable arrangement, isn't it, little mother. It is so clever of it to have June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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78f6b48
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You mustn't long in heaven," said Mrs. Wilkins. "You're supposed to be quite complete there. And it is heaven, isn't it, Rose? See how everything has been let in together -- the dandelions and the irises, the vulgar and the superior, me and Mrs. Fisher -- all welcome, all mixed up anyhow, and all so visibly happy and enjoying ourselves."
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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cb0b2e1
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I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women. No doubt there are many lovely flowers to be had by heat and constant coaxing, but then for each of these there are fifty others still lovelier that will gratefully grow in God's wholesome air and are blessed in return with a far greater intensity of scent and colour.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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0a26538
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My dream, even now, is to walk for weeks with some friend that I love, leisurely wandering from place to place, with no route arranged and no object in view, with liberty to go on all day or to linger all day, as we choose; but the question of luggage, unknown to the simple pilgrim, is one of the rocks on which my plans have been shipwrecked, and the other is the certain censure of relatives, who, not fond of walking themselves, and having ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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23954f7
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Where the trees thicken into a wood, the fragrance of the wet earth and rotting leaves kicked up by the horses' hoofs fills my soul with delight. I particularly love that smell, -- it brings before me the entire benevolence of Nature, for ever working death and decay, so piteous in themselves, into the means of fresh life and glory, and sending up sweet odours as she works.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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c7e6263
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You are all the happiness," he said, with an energy of conviction astonishing at half-past nine in the morning, "and all the music, and all the colour, and all the fragrance there is in the world."
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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b7b9a5a
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No one ever said aloud any of the kinds of things he was so constantly thinking, because no one in the parish, not Alice, not Lady Higgs, not anybody, ever seemed to see the things he saw. If they thought as he did, if they saw what he did, they never mentioned it; and to have things which are precious to one eternally unmentioned makes one, he had long discovered, lonely. These August nights, for instance--quite remarkably and unusually be..
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loneliness
beauty
appreciation-of-nature
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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1b1de6e
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But of what use is it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers and tidy shutters, when inside one's soul wanders through empty rooms, mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings it food, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired and there's no chair to sit on?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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c47bdc3
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listening with absorbed attention more to her voice than to what she was saying, and thinking how like she was, flowering through her voice into beauty in the darkness, to some butterflies he had come across in the Swiss mountains the summer before. When they were folded up they were grey, mothlike creatures that one might easily overlook, but directly they opened their wings they became the loveliest things in the world, all rose-colour or..
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butterflies
hidden-beauty
voice
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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4b31161
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How glad I am I need not hurry. What a waste of life, just getting and spending.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e244b1c
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Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. She had gone to sleep on these facts years ago, after a period of much misery, her head resting on them as on a pillow; and she had a great dread of being awakened out of so simple and untroublesome a condition.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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45cf2b8
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In the eighties, when she chiefly flourished, husbands were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin. Beds too, if they had to be mentioned, were approached with caution; and a decent reserve prevented them and husbands ever being spoken of in the same breath.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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c6a8463
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To me this out-of-the way corner was always a wonderful and a mysterious place, where my castles in the air stood close together in radiant rows, and where the strangest and most splendid adventures befell me; for the hours I passed in it and the people I met in it were all enchanted.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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797a10f
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They left off talking. They ceased to mention heaven. They were just cups of acceptance.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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2c5c5cd
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This radiant weather, when mere living is a joy, and sitting still over the fire out of the question, has been going on for more than a week.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |