Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Dodie Smith - Page 2

Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.

Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.

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.

Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes.

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

And who says you always have to understand things? You can like them without understanding them -- like 'em better sometimes.

Oh, wise young judge.

We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.

Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows.

...With stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down.

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.

How can a young man like to wear a beard?

I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame.

I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat.

When things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn't safe.

Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh!

I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.

I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England.

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.

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.

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.

Oh, comfortable cocoa!

Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.

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.

Stew's so comforting on a rainy day.

I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

Prayer's a very tricky business.

I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold

My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?

I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.

And at last father flung the rug off as if it were hampering him and strode over to the table saying, 'cocoa, cocoa!'-- it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is.

...surely I could give him--a sort of contentment... That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver.

Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!

Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.

I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?

... for I know I shall be interrupted-- I shall want to be, really, because life is too exciting to sit still for long.