Margery Sharp > Quotes

“If he's a poet, why's he in jail?" demanded a suspicious voice.
Madam Chairwoman shrugged velvet shoulders.
"Perhaps he writes free verse," she suggested cunningly.
A stir of approval answered her. Mice are all for people being free, so that they too can be freed form their eternal task of cheering prisoners--so that they can stay snug at home, nibbling the family cheese, instead of sleeping out in damp straw on a diet of stale bread.”
― Margery Sharp, The Rescuers

“Meself I like a breath of air before I go to bed, same as I like a bite o' cheese or something before I take me teeth out.”
― Margery Sharp, The Flowering Thorn

“We pray, give us this day our daily bread—not our daily caneton à la presse. Luxury should be the détente after work, the riot after abstinence, one should not become used to it.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“Life wasn’t a shadow. It was a beautiful, warm, many-voiced reality, full of omnibuses and orchestras and the smell of earth after rain.”
― Margery Sharp, Rhododendron Pie

“If you had a smattering of education you would realize that perfection of form can give validity to any sentiment, however preposterous.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“So the letters took a long time to get there, and the replies even longer to get back, and all the news was out of date; and this gave his correspondence a peculiar timeless quality which was very soothing.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“My darling, why didn't you say so before? You know, I sometimes wonder," she added, turning to Ann, "what it would be like to have no children."
"Jolly dull, " said John. "you'd be bored stiff. What would you do all day?"
"Well I could read a little," said Mrs Gayford, rather vaguely, "really good books, you know, and the Times Literary Supplement. I used to be very fond of it.”
― Margery Sharp, Rhododendron Pie

“Her last glimpse of them was as they stood waving vigorously -- Mr. Meare to the left, his wife to the right; it had to be thus, because they were also hand-in-hand.”
― Margery Sharp, Something Light

“All she knew consciously of love were its preliminaries as taught by the movies, and these she and Belinski had skipped: they had met at the centre of the maze, not on its outer rim: they accepted each other simply and finally as the basic fact of their joint lives.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“They looked at each other earnestly. Beneath the surface constraint a deep current of ease and understanding had begun to flow between them, a sense of naturalness as strong as sweet. For a moment they gave themselves up to it without question.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“I absolutely believe it is fatal to write ever below your best, even if what you write may never be published.”
― Margery Sharp

“I have so often thought how in all English art the place of women is taken by landscape. Your poetry is full of it, you are a nation of landscape painters. In other countries a man spends his fortune on a mistress; here you marry a fortune to save your estates. En revanche, the ladies have their flower-gardens. You yourself have travelled abroad, you take an interest in politics and so on, you feel yourself one of the new restless generation; but you are fighting against the landscape all the time.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“It's very interesting. You see, I'm not intellectual, I can't cut bits out of newspapers, but I am interested in people. And when they're being in love, you do get to know them.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“He was suffering from a moral appendicitis.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“Here Andrew did his father an injustice: simple, willing and conscientious, Sir Henry would have made a happy carpenter; but it was quite true that he had gone through life without ever realizing the narrowness of his pleasant path.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“Tell Aunt Addie I am sick and tired of sending love when she never sends so much as a post card back.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“When the heir is absent, the great house drowses: such is the law, for great houses and the heirs to them, all the world over.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“In one sense London, Paddington, was of course her home; she had lived there for eighteen years, and on the whole had been quite happy; it was her home as much as anywhere. But it wasn't her home inevitably; it hadn't the power that draws a grown person back to the scene of even an unhappy childhood. It made no claim on her.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown

“Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.”
― Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown