Elizabeth Cadell > Quotes

“You'll be happy if you'll remember that men don't change much. Women do. Women adapt themselves, and if you think that means they lose their individuality, you're wrong. Show me a happy marriage and I'll show you a clever woman.”
― Elizabeth Cadell

“I can't help feeling that people ask too much [of life]. They don't keep up with the Joneses any more--they outstrip them. What people call happiness, today, isn't happiness. It's enjoyment. It's pleasure. And between happiness and pleasure there's a very large gap.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Out of the Rain

“How can any child grope its way through life if its parents or guardians tear up all the pages of the past?”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Fledgling

“It was terrible if you looked at things the way they could have been, but if you concentrated on what there was, it didn't look too bad.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Fledgling

“She agreed with everything that was planned for her, and made her own arrangements later, for she had discovered that the easiest way through life was to set out obediently upon the appointed path and then slip away down a side turning.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Fledgling

“Has study, has learning ever been wasted?” “Shouldn’t one use it?” “Commercially? It is not always possible. In other ways, you will use it all your life. Sometimes, you will not even know that you are using it—but inside you there is a store; a store of beautiful music, of knowledge of what makes music and musicians. Most important of all, you have got, for ever, something of incalculable value for yourself—that is, an outlet. Whether you live the life of an artist or not,”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Six Impossible Things

“I'm only judging by his letters, but are you sure you want to marry a fellow who uses six words where one would do?”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Friendly Air

“I don’t mind his temper, or anybody’s temper,” I said, piling breakfast plates on a tray, “when I’ve done anything to provoke it, but I don’t see why people should be unpleasant to everybody else just because they happen to feel moody or tired or upset.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, My Dear Aunt Flora

“Freddie felt strongly that a natural appearance was only permissible, only really effective, it if was artificially produced.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Any Two Can Play

“No. I want to get out—outside. Out of this flat.” “There’s a full moon. Have you ever walked beside the Seine in the moonlight?” “No. Have you?” “Not with you. Let’s go.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Corner Shop

“can’t help feeling that people ask too much. They don’t keep up with the Joneses any more—they outstrip them. What people call happiness, today, isn’t happiness. It’s enjoyment. It’s pleasure. And between happiness and pleasure there’s a very large gap.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Out of the Rain

“My trouble has always been,” Mrs. Channing said, “that I can see both sides of every question.” “Trouble? That is a gift, Madame; a very unusual gift.” Mrs. Channing rose and prepared to follow her into lunch. “I don’t think it’s a gift,” she said. “If it is, it came from a very wicked fairy.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Come Be My Guest

“To speak would have meant trying to explain that here, at last, was his dream of the perfect home: simple, within his means, spotless, comfortable . . . homelike. His eyes took in the plain wooden floor, mirror-bright, the low chairs, the neat bookshelves, the fresh flowers by the window, the snowy curtains. “I like this house,” he said inadequately at last.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Deck With Flowers

“She is not wealthy in the way that Sir Bertram understands wealth, but she is not poor, and she has things that you used to have here in England, but do not have any more: loyal retainers, dependents, whole families living on her bounty, families whose every member she knows and cares for. Her life is simple, her house, compared with this, is shabby, but in her own domain she is what I called her - a queen.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Golden Collar

“Nothing more was said. It was evident that Uncle Robert, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, would say no farewells and make no compliments.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Language of the Heart

“Well, she asked him questions about his age and his attainments. The fact that he was a Catholic gave her pause, but when I explained to her that the present Pope was a well-meaning sort of chap, she said she was prepared to meet him halfway.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, The Fox From His Lair

“Too much had to be fitted into youth: learning, growing, preparing, shaping. You went through it all, pushed, urged, encouraged or bullied by your elders; you went through it blindly and without any sense that the years were slipping away. And suddenly you came home and found that you were twenty-one and grown up. Perhaps other girls reached this stage of awareness earlier; she couldn't tell. For herself, it was enough to understand that childhood was over, and that it had been a time of great happiness. The bad times went unremembered, the memory of the good times endured.”
― Elizabeth Cadell, Six Impossible Things