274 Quotes by Anthony Powell

Major Fosdick was cleaning his guns in the drawing-room because it was the most comfortable room in the house. While he did this he brooded. He enjoyed cleaning his guns and he enjoyed brooding so that the afternoon was passing pleasantly enough and its charm was disturbed only by the presence of his wife, who sat opposite him, mending a flannel undergarment and making disjointed conversation about subjects in which he was not interested.

Books do furnish a room.

Anyway, what can one do here? I am seriously thinking of running away and joining the Foreign Legion or the North-West Mounted Police—whichever work the shorter hours.

There is always a real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, sometimes the other.

Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody.

In the break-up of a marriage the world inclines to take the side of the partner with most vitality, rather than the one apparently least to blame.

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.