125 Quotes by Elizabeth von Arnim

"How is it that you should feel so vastly superior whenever you do not happen to enter into or understand your neighbour’s thoughts when, as a matter of fact, your not being able to do so is less a sign of folly in your neighbour than of incompleteness in yourself?"

"Home is the best place when life begins to wobble."

"I don’t believe there was ever anybody who loved being happy as much as I did. What I mean is that I was so acutely conscious of being happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn’t ever bored, and was always and continuously grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of the world."

"Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful."

"She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a pug dog’s tail."

"Well, I for one am unable to imagine how anybody who lives with an intelligent and devoted dog can every be lonely."

"Well, she had had the most wonderful summer; she had got that anyhow tucked away up the sleeve of her memory, and could bring it out and look at it when the days were wet and she felt cold and sick."

"The longer I live the greater is my respect for manure in all its forms."

"Where the trees thicken into a wood, the fragrance of the wet earth and rotting leaves kicked up by the horses’ hoofs fills my soul with delight. I particularly love that smell, – it brings before me the entire benevolence of Nature, for ever working death and decay, so piteous in themselves, into the means of fresh life and glory, and sending up sweet odours as she works."

"Love isn’t decent. Love is glorious and shameless."