Margot Asquith quotes
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“It is easier to influence strong than weak characters in life.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1934). “More Or Less about Myself”
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“The capacity to suffer varies more than anything that I have observed in human nature.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”
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“He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : In Listener 11 June 1953 "Margot Oxford: a Personal Impression" by Lady Violet Bonham Carter
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“My father's nature turned out no waste product; he had none of that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He took his own happiness with him.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1963). “The Autobiography of Margot Asquith: Vol. two”
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“The spirit is an inward flame; a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“Although I am not stupid, the mathematical side of my brain is like dumb notes upon a damaged piano.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies, not our friends”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs --apart from discernment --a certain greatness to find him.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1920). “The Autobiography of Margot Asquith”
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“To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has never had a chance, poor devil, you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“Rich men's houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1963). “Autobiography”
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“Stafford Cripps has a brilliant mind, until he makes it up.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“I have no face, only two profiles clapped together.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“Lloyd George? There is no Lloyd George. There is a marvellous brain; but if you were to shut him in a room and look through the keyhole there would be nobody there.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“If Kitchener was not a great man, he was, at least, a great poster.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“There are some people that you cannot change, you must either swallow them whole or leave them alone.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”
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“Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it is not enough to say "I am doing no harm," I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth-the power of love-although I have put it last, is the rarest.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1963). “Autobiography”
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“She spends her day powdering her face till she looks like a bled pig.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“He could never see a belt without hitting below it.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : In Listener 11 June 1953 "Margot Oxford: a Personal Impression" by Lady Violet Bonham Carter
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“Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”
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“Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that and those that don't need to be told.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“It is always dangerous to generalize, but the American people, while infinitely generous, are a hard and strong race and, but for the few cemeteries I have seen, I am inclined to think they never die.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“There is nothing more perplexing in life than to know at what point you should surrender your intellect to your faith.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1934). “More Or Less about Myself”
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“From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1963). “Autobiography”
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“All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light ...”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”
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“[On Austen Chamberlain:] He is more loyal to his friends than to his convictions.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“Convictions no doubt have to be modified or expanded to meet changing conditions but ... to be a reliable political leader sooner or later your anchors must hold fast where other men's drag.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“I have always wanted to be a man, if only for the reason that I would like to have gauged the value of my intellect.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“[On spiritualism:] I always knew the living talked rot, but it's nothing to the rot the dead talk.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“[To Jean Harlow, who repeatedly mispronounced her first name:] No, no, Jean. The t is silent, as in Harlow.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“Too much brilliance has its disadvantages, and misplaced wit may raise a laugh, but often beheads a topic of profound interest.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1934). “More Or Less about Myself”
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“[To her host upon leaving a party:] Don't think it hasn't been charming, because it hasn't.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“The power to love what is purely abstract is given to few.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“the announcement that you are going to tell a good story (and the chuckle that precedes it) is always a dangerous opening.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1934). “More Or Less about Myself”
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“I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratory, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons, too long.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”
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“My dear old friend King George V told me he would never have died but for that vile doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius....”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”
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“If you have been sunned through and through like an apricot on a wall from your earliest days, you are oversensitive to any withdrawal of heat.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow and the Tweed, in the year 1864.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“My sort of looks are of the kind that bore me when I see them on other people.”
-- Margot Asquith -
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“It is not dying, but living, that is a preparation for Death.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“The Almighty is a wonderful handicapper: He will not give us everything.”
-- Margot AsquithSource : Margot Asquith (2014). “Margot Asquith's Great War Diary 1914-1916: The View from Downing Street”, p.147, Oxford University Press, USA
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“Rumor is untraceable, incalculable, and infectious.”
-- Margot Asquith -
“Till I see money spent on the betterment of man instead of on his idleness and destruction, I shall not believe in any perfect form of government ...”
-- Margot Asquith -
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