15 Quotes by Elspeth Huxley

this was a moment of magic revealing to us all, for a few moments, a hidden world of grace and wonder beyond the one of which our eyes told us, a world that no words could delineate, as insubstanttial as a cloud, as iridescent as a dragon-fly and as innocent as the heart of a rose.

What sorts of sin?"Any sort. When other people commit them, you are startled, but when you commit them yourself, they seem absolutely natural.

...that's the way to tell a true story from a made-up one. A made-up story always has a neat and tidy end. But true stories don't end, at least until their heroes and heroines die, and not then really because the things they did and didn't do, sometimes live on.

Tilly was downcast; as with all perfectionists, it was the detail others might not notice that destroyed for her the pleasure of achievement.

...when the present stung her, she sought her antidote in the future, which was as sure to hold achievement as the dying flower to hold the fruit when its petals wither.

How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.

One of the stock Sydney jokes is of the census-taker who enquires: ‘How many children have you, ma’am?’ ‘Two living and three in Melbourne.’

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.

Only man is not content to leave things as they are but must always be changing them, and when he has done so, is seldom satisfied with the result.