Miss Read > Quotes

“A quarter past three," she exclaimed, catching sight of the bedside clock. "What a time to be drinking tea!"
"Anytime," Harold told her, "is time to be drinking tea.”
― Miss Read

“How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion. The seedpods of stitchwort hang ready for delightful popping between thumb and finger, and later the bladder campion offers a larger, if less crisp, globe to burst. In the autumn, acorns, beechnuts, and conkers bedizen their path, with all their manifold possibilities of fun. In the summer, there is an assortment of honeys to be sucked from bindweed flowers, held fragile and fragrant to hungry lips, and the tiny funnels of honeysuckle and clover blossoms to taste.”
― Miss Read, Village Diary

“Thoughts by a graveside are too dark and deep to be sustained for any length of time. Sooner or later the hurt mind turns to the sun for healing, and this is as it should be, for otherwise, what future could any of us hope for, but madness?”
― Miss Read, Village School

“I soon realized that what I really wanted was time to ruminate, time to observe, and often time to be alone.”
― Miss Read, Early Days

“Fairacre children could handle tools, and had the plodding unhurried methods of the countryman that produce amazing results. Here was the perfect medium for their inborn skill. The golden sand was turned, raked, piled, patted and ornamented with shells and seaweed,”
― Miss Read, Village School

“For Amy is the victim of today's common malaise—too much self analysis; while I, finding myself remarkably uninteresting, am only too pleased to observe others and the natural objects around me. Thus I am”
― Miss Read, Village Diary: A Novel

“Anyone with any sense welcomes retirement,”
― Miss Read, The School at Thrush Green

“The thing to do,' I said as we gained the lane that leads to Beech Green and Fairacre, 'is to get absolutely everything in the summer and lock it in a cupboard. Then order every scrap of food from a shop the week before Christmas and sit back and enjoy watching everyone else go mad. I've been meaning to do it for years.”
― Miss Read, Village School

“In any case, I see no reason why a good-tempered, steady-going cat should not be included in a country classroom. It adds a pleasantly domestic touch to our working conditions.”
― Miss Read, Village Diary

“How many people had stood here, as she did now, puzzled, unhappy, numb with pain and perplexity? And how many had found comfort in the knowledge of the continuity of life, of being but one link in a long chain of human experience, in this old, old setting?”
― Miss Read, News from Thrush Green

“Life went on. No matter what happened, life went on, inexorably, callously, it might seem, to those in grief. But somehow, in this continuity, there were the seeds of comfort.”
― Miss Read, Emily Davis

“You aren't just given happiness, you have to pick it up here and there all through the day.”
― Miss Read, Fresh from the Country

“Miss Clare had already arrived when I walked over at a quarter to nine. Her bicycle, as upright and as ancient as its owner, was propped just inside the lobby door.”
― Miss Read, Village School

“In this brief pause between activities, she suddenly became conscious of living completely in the present. It came but rarely. One was either looking back anxiously wondering which duties had been left undone, or forward to those duties which lay before one.”
― Miss Read, The School at Thrush Green

“How seldom one can indulge in the inflation of any sort of emotion without life's little pin-pricks bursting the balloon.”
― Miss Read, Village School

“My parents were great readers of poetry and had a weakness for the light fantastic.'
'A pleasant change from the heavy dismal we suffer from everywhere today,' commented Winnie.”
― Miss Read, News from Thrush Green

“Later that evening she thrust the exercise book into her fire, and holding it resolutely down with the poker, she watched it burn to ashes.”
― Miss Read, Over the Gate: A Novel

“with a rather well-turned aside, about the Romans’ Lares et Penates—when I must have dropped off.”
― Miss Read, Village Diary: A Novel

“The end of her six weeks’ sojourn was in sight, and Nelly had heard, with considerable relief, that die usual help was returning to her dudes before long.”
― Miss Read, Return to Thrush Green: A Novel

“Charles Henstock’s con frontation with the Thurgood ladies.”
― Miss Read, Affairs at Thrush Green: A Novel

“Our village of Fairacre is no lovelier than many others. We have rats as well as roses in our back gardens, scoundrels as well as stalwarts ploughing our fields, and plenty of damp and dirt hidden behind the winsome exteriors of our older cottages. But at times it is not only home to us but heaven too; and this was just such an occasion.”
― Miss Read, Over the Gate: A Novel

“galvanized iron”
― Miss Read, Village School

“We were talking of Miss Parr, who had died recently. She had been a manager of Fairacre School since the reign of King Edward the Seventh, and was a stickler for etiquette. It appears that one day she met Mrs Willet, now our caretaker’s wife, but then a child of six, in the lane, and was shocked to find the little girl omitted to curtsy to her. At once she took the child to its mother, and demanded instant punishment.”
― Miss Read, Village Diary: A Novel

“Bembridge, and he felt more and more like the unfortunate Wedding Guest who encountered the Ancient Mariner.”
― Miss Read, Thrush Green

“raffia hats, wool-embroidered egg-cosies”
― Miss Read, Storm in the Village

“When one is alone one is receptive - a ready vessel for the sights, the scents and sounds which pour in through relaxed and animated senses to refresh the inner man.”
― Miss Read, Village Diary

“She hung up the clean frying pan, stacked the crockery, spread the tea towel to dry, and then made for the door. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she cried, ‘and keep your pecker up.”
― Miss Read, Battles at Thrush Green: A Novel

“And now Emily Davis was dead!

Or was she, wondered Jane? What was that saying about those who lived in the hearts of others? Something to the effect that they never really died. If that were the case, then Emily Davis would certainly live on.”
― Miss Read, Emily Davis

“You will forget,” he assured her seriously. “Look at the day ahead and never backward. You don’t need a caravan for happiness, you know.”
― Miss Read, Thrush Green

“That evening, as dusk was falling, Dolly Clare took her accustomed walk at the edge of Hundred Acre Field, behind her home.

All her little duties were done, and she felt free to enjoy the evening air before settling by the fireside.

She reached the oak tree, and stood very still, watching three fine pheasants searching for acorns at the foot of the gnarled old trunk.

Above her the rooks were flying homeward. The great field before her, gleaming with gold when last she walked there with Emily, was now freshly ploughed, the furrows dark and glistening. Within a few days the seed would be planted and she would watch, alone now, the first tender blades appear, then the ripening crop and, finally, its harvesting.

The comforting cycle of the seasons continued unchanged—the sowing, the growing and the reaping.

Dolly Claire turned, and made her way homeward with a grateful heart. Life went on, and was still sweet.”
― Miss Read, Emily Davis