“ 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… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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 b… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ Oh, I thought of calling it Journeyings in Germany. It sounds well, and would be correct. Or Jottings from German Journeyings--I haven't quite decided yet... (Minora) Elizabeth von Arnim
“ J'ai une passion pour les tulipes, plus que pour aucune autre fleur de printemps; gaies, robustes, gracieuses, elles semblent de jeunes filles sortant du bain à côté des jacinthes, ces femmes aux form… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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 tho… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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. Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ From The Jasmine Farm by Elizabeth von Arnim, c 1934: ...except for a little trickle of water somewhere near, and the piping, on an oleander bush, of a solitary bird, so great a stillness surrounded h… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ Nor would I willingly miss the early darkness and the pleasant firelight tea and the long evenings among my books. Elizabeth von Arnim
“ How wrong they were. I wasn’t a poor little thing at all. Even as early as this, such is the relief when pressure is removed, even in the very act of waving my last goodbyes, I found it quite difficul… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ What a place for him who intends to pass an examination, to write a book, or who wants the crumples got by crushing together too long with his fellows to be smoothed out of his soul. Elizabeth von Arnim
“ It seemed, however, that I had. I didn’t want any more, so I got them. And now I am glad, for if, as I had sometimes wished at that time, I could have finished with a consciousness become unbearable,… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the f… Elizabeth von Arnim
“ Fortunately, though she was hungry, she didn't mind missing a meal. Life was full of meals. They took up an enormous proportion of one's time. Elizabeth von Arnim
“ 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. Elizabeth von Arnim
“ No blandishments could make those cats stir if they weren’t in the mood, and one does want whatever one is calling to come. Elizabeth von Arnim
“ Well, it was evident that in ordinary cases, having tired one’s host, one would go away. But was this quite an ordinary case? She couldn’t think so. She couldn’t help remembering, though it was a thin… Elizabeth von Arnim
