34 Quotes by E.F. Benson

No proper person fusses about death; that's a train which we are all sure to catch.

It took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the room had leaped into light.

There’s many things in this world that will depress you, and make you good for nothing, if you take them seriously, and that cheer you up if you don’t.

There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.

These invitations were couched in Chesterfield terms: Mr. Wyse said that he had met a mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence, and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you might not give him the joy.

I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.” The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. “Ay,” she broke in; “and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty.” She swayed her head slowly from side to side. “A many things to see and sorrow for.

My dear, it is just busy people that have time for everything.

Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic, but we’ll hope for the best.