Kirsty Sinclair > Kirsty's Quotes

“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong women the man, many years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“I can't help but think that it's an unfortunate custom to name children after people who come to sticky ends. Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things. There are too many Judes and Tesses and Clarissas and Cordelias around. If we must name our children after literary figures then we should search out happy ones, although it's true they are much harder to find.”
― Kate Atkinson, Emotionally Weird

“On the morning appointed for her departure Tess awoke before dawn — at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute save for one prophetic bird, who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence, as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.”
― Thomas Hardy

“So that was Chris and her reading and schooling, two Chrisses there were that fought for her heart and tormented her. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day; and the next you'd waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you'd cry for that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies.”
― Lewis Grassic Gibbon

“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. ”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris- no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never "weeps, he knows not why." If Harris's eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.

If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris, and say:

"Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses held by seaweed?" Harris would take you by the arm, and say:

"I know what it is, old man; you've got a chill. Now you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted- put you right in less than no time."

Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would immediately greet you with:

"So glad you've come, old fellow; I've found a nice place round the corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". ”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof. ”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”
― Iain Banks, The Crow Road

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"

I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.

"Because, he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You — you strange — you almost unearthly thing! — I love as my own flesh. You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one's companion.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley, Stand a Little Taller: Counsel and Inspiration for Each Day of the Year