Dodie Smith quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Dodie Smith on Wise Famous Quotes.

How can a young man like to wear a beard?

What with books and chocolate, there's not much else you could have in it, is there?

Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

What is this insurmountable barrier round him? What's it made of? Where did it come from?

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

It can't be immoral to love anyone -- as long as one doesn't hurt anyone by it.

It's a beautiful sight to see good dancers doing simple steps. It's a painful sight to see beginners doing complicated patterns.

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

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

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

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

The way one's mind can dash about just while one opens a window.

Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

It is odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it.

Topaz is beautiful - largely because of the strangeness of her face.

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

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

At least we're companions in misfortune

He can be so appreciative of all forms of art, but so matter-of-fact and unemotional about it.

Death is too much to ask of the living.

Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.

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

The tea was a comfort - and by that time I more than needed comfort.

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

She is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare.

I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious ...

What a tiny list of friends I have! All my fault. I less and less want to see people.

It was wonderful, of course
ham with mustard is a meal of glory.

...[H]e's so good and good people are usually happy. But do happy things happen to the good, or can the good make happiness out of unhappiness?

Thinking of death
strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off
made me feel happier than ever.

Things you let yourself imagine happening, never do happen.

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

I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to everyone in the world.

It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts ...

I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.

Art could state very little - it's whole business is to evoke responses.

Prayer's a very tricky business.

I stood there ringing the bell and banging on the door, feeling I could make someone be there, knowing all the time that I couldn't.

Mr. Dearly wasn't exactly handsome but he had the kind of face you don't get tired of.

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

As long as I live I shall remember that silent minute.

Ah, but you're the insidious type
Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.

People do look different with their eyes closed, their features seem so much more sculptured.

I heard Molly say, 'Our Mouse is a hundred miles away.' But I wasn't as far away as that; I was in a dimly lit street somewhere in Hampstead.

But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine.

I wasn't merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids.

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.

God - it's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going and what it's all about

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.

I really am just as discontented, but I don't seem to notice it so much.

The Devil's out of fashion.

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

The vague expression was gone from his eyes - I had a feeling it was gone forever.

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.

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

Simon: You always were wise beyond your years.
Cassandra: No I wasn't. I used to be consciously naive.

said, "because he was at the British Museum.

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

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

Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other

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

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.

They said this flat was converted but I think its still heathen

The thought was horrible, yet fascinating.

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

It seemed an awful waste that we weren't in love with each other.

Stew's so comforting on a rainy day.

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

Long prayers are like nagging.

I like seeing people when they can't see me.

Oh, I have just had an idea - after tea I shall attack myself with sandpaper.

Extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery.

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

I still didn't believe him. And for the moment, I didn't much care one way or the other. My whole mind had swung back to Simon.

She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exiting may be just around the corner.

While I have been writing I have lived in the past, the light of it has been all around me ...

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

It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

Incidentally, I never felt less brisk in my life, because being looked at like that makes a person feel dizzy.

Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.

I had found out in that glittering corridor off the ballroom that being with him could be more painful than being away from him.

I love you, I love you, I love you. ~Cassandra

There's nothing more, except that I usually sit down until the flames die down and try to think myself back into the past.

If you love people, you take them on trust.

Ham with mustard is a meal of glory

Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

And suddenly all the puppies were her puppies; she was their mother - just as Pongo had felt he was their father.

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

It was a rather dreadful thought but somehow comforting.

I could look at stationers' shops forever and ever.

I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.

A loss of sensibility follows a loss of innocence, at once a penalty and a compensation.

But it is always dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless and the real word is there instead and seems meaningless, too.

Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?