274 Quotes by Anthony Powell

Cortney at times seemed unnerved by Da Costa's general appearance and manner, but most of all by his clothes, which, as always, looked as if they had been made by a good tailor for someone of quite different shape.

Widmerpool had tidied himself up a little since leaving school, though there was still a kind of exotic drabness about his appearance that seemed to mark him out from the rest of mankind.

Maclintick's calculatedly humdrum appearance, although shabby, seemed aimed at concealing bohemian affiliations.

He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.

The Misses Braby were twins who had shapeless faces on which the features seemed to have been placed fortuitously without any attempt at assembling them in such a way as to convey a significance.

In fact, she [Pamela Flitton] seemed to prefer 'older men' on the whole, possibly because of their potentiality for deeper suffering. Young men might superficially transcend their seniors in this respect, but they probably showed less endurance in sustaining that state, while, once pinioned, the middle-aged could be made to writhe almost indefinitely.

He saw that as usual it would be better to be careful as for some years now he had found being good to be almost out of the question.

Bring a torch, if you've got one. It's as dark as hell and stinks of something far worse than cheese.

Mrs Maclintick's dissatisfaction with life had probably reached so advanced a stage that she was unable to approach any new event amiably, even when proffered temporary alleviation of her own chronic spleen.