Dodie Smith
The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to.Collection: Family
There is something revolting about the way girls' minds often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.Collection: Marriage
Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.
I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life.
Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.
The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.Collection: Funny
Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.Collection: Friendship
If you love people, you take them on trust.Collection: People
Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.Collection: Suffering
When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.Collection: Book
Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.Collection: Heart
I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.Collection: Writing
It came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to London - that it has always been , in spirit, a stretch of countryside; and that it links the Londons of all periods together most magically - by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of a ever-changing town.Collection: Heart
The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.Collection: Writing
Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?Collection: Independence
What a tiny list of friends I have! All my fault. I less and less want to see people.Collection: Friendship
I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.Collection: Morning
There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.Collection: Girl
Many dogs can understand almost every word humans say, while humans seldom learn to recognize more than half a dozen barks, if that. And barks are only a small part of the dog language. A wagging tail can mean so many things. Humans know that it means a dog is pleased, but not what a dog is saying about his pleasedness.Collection: Dog
I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious.Collection: Usual
...I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.Collection: Happens
Death is too much to ask of the living.Collection: Grief
Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.Collection: Love You
People's clothes ought to be buried with them.Collection: Clothes
He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.Collection: Father
I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.Collection: Real
It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.Collection: Writing
Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.Collection: Girl
Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.Collection: Girl
I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.Collection: Rain
I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray.Collection: Real
Oh, comfortable cocoa!Collection: Cocoa
Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.Collection: Father
My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?Collection: Children
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return -- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.Collection: Love
When things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn't safe.Collection: Mean
I wanted so terribly to be good to him.Collection: Be Good
What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?Collection: Doe
Ham with mustard is a meal of gloryCollection: Meals
How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!Collection: Wish
Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes.Collection: Reading
Oh, wise young judge.Collection: Wise
Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.Collection: Liars
There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.Collection: Sweet
And who says you always have to understand things? You can like them without understanding them -- like 'em better sometimes.Collection: Understanding
Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.Collection: Conventionality
Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh!Collection: Elderly
...surely I could give him--a sort of contentment... That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver.Collection: Giving