Nancy Mitford Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“I am sometimes bored by people, but never by life.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“It's a funny thing that people are always ready to admit it if they've no talent for drawing or music, whereas everyone imagines that they themselves are capable of true love, which is a talent like any other, only far more rare.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“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 -
“Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“People in towns are always preoccupied. 'Have I missed the bus? Have I forgotten the potatoes? Can I get across the road?”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married. When it isn't they blame the other person, which is clearly absurd. I believe that is what generally starts the trouble.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“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 -
“The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“I have only ever 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 -
“Paris in the early morning has a cheerful, bustling aspect, a promise of delicious things to come, a positive smell of coffee and croissants, quite peculiar to itself. The people welcome a new day as 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 -
“I Love children, especially when they cry for then someone takes them away.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“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 -
“In France that is the one rule, never make trouble.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“Greece is not a country of happy mediums: everything there seems to be either wonderful or horrible ...”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“A typical Irish dinner would be: cream flavored with lobster, cream with bits of veal in it, green peas and cream, cream cheese, cream flavored with strawberries.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“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 -
“Always remember, children, that marriage is a very intimate relationship. It's not just sitting and chatting to a person; there are other things, you know.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“Most people like reading about what they already know - there is even a public for yesterday's weather.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“What is so nice & so unexpected about life is the way it improves as it goes along. I think you should impress this fact on your children because I think young people have an awful feeling that life is slipping past them & they must do something - catch something - they don't quite know what, whereas they've only got to wait & it all comes.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“Do you always laugh when you make love?' said Fabrice. I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I do. I generally laugh when I'm happy and cry when I'm not. Do you find it odd?”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“English doctors have killed 3/4 of my friends & the joke is the remaining 1/4 go on recommending them, so odd is human nature.”
-- Nancy Mitford -
“Irish gardens beat all for horror. With 19 gardeners, Lord Talbot of Malahide has produced an affair exactly like a suburban golf course.”
-- Nancy Mitford
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