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How they had dreamed together, he and she... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs, - useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses - you could see these as plainly as in the daytime; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.
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 -
Things were a little untidy, but what did that matter? It was possible to become the slave of things; possible to miss life in preparation for living.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
She belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a ressurection of beauty there is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
Rose's own experience was that goodness, the state of being good, was only reached with difficulty and pain. It took a long time to get to it; in fact one never did get to it, or, if for a flashing instant one did, it was only for a flashing instant. Desperate perseverance was needed to struggle along its path, and all the way was dotted with doubts.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a blessed sort of work, and if Eve had had a spade in Paradise and known what to do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
In bed by herself: adorable condition.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk,—real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what they still tried to hope?
Elizabeth von Arnim -
...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.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
A train was nearly due, and intending passengers were sitting in front of the hotels drinking beer while they waited, and various conveyances had stopped there on their way to Göhren or Sellin, and the Lonely One seemed a very noisy, busy one to me as we rattled by over the stones, and I was glad to turn off to the left at a sign-post pointing towards Göhren and get on to the deep, sandy, silent forest roads.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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... the expression on her face, which was swept by the excitement of what she saw ... was as luminous and tremulous under it as water in sunlight when it is ruffled by a gust of wind.
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's fun being alive, isn't it? I feel as if I'd only got to stretch up my hands to all those stars and catch as many of them as I want to.
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 -
It was a place to bless God in and cease from vain words.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
It is true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usually liked everybody most when they weren't there.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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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 -
One should continue of course with dignity to develop, however old one may be. She had nothing against developing, against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive one was not dead -obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change, ripening, were life.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
It was difficult to exercise him properly, because he was so big that even if I ran—and I was for ever running, in my zeal for his welfare,—he still, to keep up with me, needed only to walk, and if I paused for any reason, such as getting my breath or having to tie my shoelace, instantly he lay down.
Elizabeth von Arnim -
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.
Elizabeth von Arnim