274 Quotes by Anthony Powell

One’s associations with people are regulated as much by what they stand for, as by what they are, individual characteristics becoming from time to time submerged in more general implications.

Barbara stumbled, and, for a brief second, took my arm. It was then, perhaps, that a force was released, no less powerful for its action proving somewhat delayed; for emotions of that kind are not always immediately grasped.

Maclintick did not answer. He removed the cork from a bottle, the slight ‘pop’ of its emergence appearing to em-body the material of a reply to his wife, at least all the reply he intended to give.

I was far from understanding that the capacity of men interested in power is not necessarily expressed in the brilliance of their conversation.

The crematorium was a blaze of sunshine.

A company commander,’ said Dicky Umfraville, when we met later that year, ’needs the qualifications of a ringmaster in a first-class circus, and a nanny in a large family.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

I must have been about twenty-one or twenty-two at the time, and held then many rather wild ideas on the subject of women: conceptions largely the result of having read a good deal without simultaneous opportunity to modify by personal experience the recorded judgment of others upon that matter: estimates often excellent in their conclusions if correctly interpreted, though requiring practical knowledge to be appreciated at their full value.

She clung on to me desperately, whether as an affectionate gesture, a means of encouraging sympathy, or merely to maintain her balance, I was uncertain. The condition of excitement which she had reached to some extent communicated itself to me, for her flushed face rather improved her appearance, and she had lost all her earlier ill-humour.