125 Quotes by Elizabeth von Arnim

"What fun it had been, having an admirer even for that little while. No wonder people liked admirers. They seemed, in some strange way, to make one come alive."

"One went on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful day when the coverings were going to be dropped and one would see it was death after all, that it had been death all the time, death pretending, death waiting"

"Nobody could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she was too evidently shining."

"That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses - you could see these as plainly as in the daytime; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance."

"...to go into the garden in its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity. The first breath on opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes me gasp, and I feel a black and sinful object in the midst of all the spotlessness."

"Rien ne répugne plus à un Allemand que de sentir qu'on a plaisir à le rencontrer. Soyez déplaisant, revêche, cassant, et vous le verrez de minute en minute se faire plus aimable."

"Si, d'aventure, il prenait à mes meubles la fantaisie de se faire épousseter le jour où j'aurais quelque chose de plus intéressant à faire, je revendique hautement le droit de les précipiter tous dans le feu de joie le plus proche, de m'établir près du brasier et d'y réchauffer gaiement mes pieds glacés après avoir vendu tous mes chiffons au premier chineur venu."

"Christopher loved her with the passion of youth, of imagination, of poetry, of all the fresh beginnings of wonder and worship that have been since love first lit his torch and made in the darkness a great light."

"For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness."

"There’s no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief."