48 Quotes by L.P. Hartley

How terrifyingly efficient she sounds," said Stephen. "I think I should faint in her presence.

El pasado es un país extraño; allí hacen las cosas de manera muy diferente a como las hacemos aquí

And I liked Ted Burgess in a reluctant, half-admiring, half-hating way. When I was away from him I could think of him objectively as a working farmer whom no one at the Hall thought much of. But when I was with him his mere physical presence cast a spell on me, it established an ascendancy which I could not break. He was, I felt, what a man ought to be, what I should like to be when I grew up.

Shut the windows, draw the curtains, keep the rumour out!

Try now, try now, it isn't too late'...Excitement, like hysteria, bubbled up in me from a hundred unsealed springs. If it isn't too late, I thought confusedly, neither it is too early: I haven't much time left to spoil. It was the last flicker of instinct of self-preservation which had failed me so signally at Brandham Hall.

The future was to be a laborious business.

I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom, it was like a cricket match played in the drizzle, where everyone had an excuse - and what a dull excuse! - for playing badly. Life was meant to test a man, bring out his courage, initiative, resource; and I longed, I thought, to be tested: I did not want to fall on my knees and call myself a miserable sinner.

Indeed, Hilda was always putting her oar in, constituting herself the voice of conscience; she was a task-mistress, leading the chorus, undefined, unrecognised, but clearly felt, of those who thought he ought to try more, do more, be more, than he had it in him to try, or do, or be.

With the opening of the door, and the installation of electric light in the cupboard, the skeletons had crumbled into dust.