Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Dodie Smith

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English novelist Dodie Smith.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. She is best known for writing I Capture the Castle (1948) and the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include Dear Octopus (1938) and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 film version. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003).

English - Novelist | May 3, 1896 - November 24, 1990

Source: Wikipedia

Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.

Dodie Smith

The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to.

Dodie Smith

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

Dodie Smith

I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.

Dodie Smith

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.

Dodie Smith

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

Dodie Smith

I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life.

Dodie Smith

Wakings are the worst times--almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on my heart.

Dodie Smith

Death is too much to ask of the living.

Dodie Smith

I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious.

Dodie Smith

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

Dodie Smith

It's a beautiful sight to see good dancers doing simple steps. It's a painful sight to see beginners doing complicated patterns.

Dodie Smith

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

Dodie Smith

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

Dodie Smith

I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.

Dodie Smith

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

Dodie Smith

I believe it is customary to get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted-- my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than did.

Dodie Smith

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.

Dodie Smith

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.

Dodie Smith

They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That's not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It's just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.

Dodie Smith

Ham with mustard is a meal of glory

Dodie Smith

Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.

Dodie Smith

If you love people, you take them on trust.

Dodie Smith

Though he had very little Latin beyond "Cave canem," he had, as a young dog, devoured Shakespeare (in a tasty leather binding).

Dodie Smith

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation-- every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.

Dodie Smith

People's clothes ought to be buried with them.

Dodie Smith

It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts.

Dodie Smith

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Dodie Smith

...I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.

Dodie Smith

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?

Dodie Smith

Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.

Dodie Smith

a loss of sensibility follows a loss of innocence, at once a penalty and a compensation.

Dodie Smith

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.

Dodie Smith

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.

Dodie Smith

Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.

Dodie Smith

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.

Dodie Smith

Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.

Dodie Smith

I like seeing people when they can't see me.

Dodie Smith

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.

Dodie Smith

The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon.

Dodie Smith

I wanted to know more about the young ... strange that though they laughed so loud, they so seldom smiled. Perhaps laughter was involuntary whereas smiling was part of an attitude to life.

Dodie Smith

The Devil's out of fashion.

Dodie Smith

My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.

Dodie Smith

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.

Dodie Smith

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

Dodie Smith

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.

Dodie Smith

Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

Dodie Smith

extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery.

Dodie Smith

What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?

Dodie Smith

What a tiny list of friends I have! All my fault. I less and less want to see people.

Dodie Smith

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

Dodie Smith

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Dodie Smith

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

Dodie Smith

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.

Dodie Smith

So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.

Dodie Smith

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.

Dodie Smith

Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Dodie Smith

The tea was a comfort - and by that time I more than needed comfort.

Dodie Smith

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me-and I long to mention it myself

Dodie Smith

Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

Dodie Smith

Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Dodie Smith

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