Elizabeth von Arnim Quotes
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I have a peculiar capacity for doing nothing and yet enjoying myself.
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Now all persons who have spent much of their time in Germany, and certainly all born Germans, have a great fear of the law. Their one idea is not to attract its attention, to be inconspicuous, to crawl in time, as it were, under tables. Accordingly, when I saw myself within reach of its clutches, even though it was English law and presumably more mild, I began to tremble, while the children, being born Germans, trembled harder, and Elsa the maid, not only born German but of the class which can least easily defend itself, trembled hardest of anybody.
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There was nothing, she saw at once, to be hoped for in the way of interest from their clothes. She did not consciously think this, for 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 they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You didn't take your clothes to parties; they took you. It was quite a mistake to think that a woman, a really well-dressed woman, wore out her clothes; it was the clothes that wore out the woman--dragging her about at all hours of the day and night. No wonder men stayed young longer. Just new trousers couldn't excite them. She couldn't suppose that even the newest trousers ever behaved like that...
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Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of a husband.
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For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again long, desiring . . .
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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.
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Impossible for anyone to conceive the torments of his nights in bed with his beloved one and estranged from her. That turning of backs, that cold space between their two unhappy bodies.
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When I drive to the lupins and see them all spread out as far as eye can reach in perfect beauty of colour and scent and bathed in the mild August sunshine, I feel I must send for somebody to come and look at them with me, and talk about them to me, and share in the pleasure; and when I run over the list of my friends and try to find one who would enjoy them, I am frightened once more at the solitariness in which we each of us live.
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Out there on the plain there is silence, and where there is silence I have discovered there.
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Say It Before It's Too Late.
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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.
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What I really meant to write to you about today was to tell you that I read your learned and technical and I am sure admirable denouncements of Walt Whitman with a respectful attention due to so much earnestness; and when I had done, and wondered awhile pleasantly at the amount of time for letter-writing the Foreign Office allows its young men, I stretched myself, and got my hat, and went down to the river; and I sat at the water's edge in the middle of a great many buttercups; and there was a little wind; and the little wind knocked the heads of the buttercups together; and it seemed to amuse them, or else something else did, for I do assure you I thought I heard them laugh.
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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?
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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.
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1922 was a bad year for Elizabeth. She was disappointed by some of the reviews of The Enchanted April although it was to prove the most popular — excepting the first — of all her novels. She suffered from depressions that she couldn’t throw off. Her doctor diagnosed menopausal symptoms.
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No blandishments could make those cats stir if they weren’t in the mood, and one does want whatever one is calling to come.
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Once more she had that really rather disgusting suspicion that her life till now had not only been loud but empty.
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Keep quiet and say one's prayers-certainly not merely the best, but the only things to do if one would be truly happy; but, ashamed of asking when I have received so much, the only form of prayer I would use would be a form of thanksgiving.
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The passion for being for ever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. I can entertain myself quite well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I have been alone at all.
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Where the trees thicken into a wood, the fragrance of the wet earth and rotting leaves kicked up by the horses' hoofs fills my soul with delight. I particularly love that smell, -- it brings before me the entire benevolence of Nature, for ever working death and decay, so piteous in themselves, into the means of fresh life and glory, and sending up sweet odours as she works.
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Virginia had, however, long felt that her mother was not truly religious—not truly and seriously, as she and Stephen were. No doubt she thought she was, and perhaps she was, in some queer way; but were queer ways of being religious permissible? Weren’t they as bad, really, as no ways at all?
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Love isn't decent. Love is glorious and shameless.
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For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness.
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I was for ever making plans, and if nothing came of them, what did it matter? The mere making had been a joy.