Margot Asquith
Margot Asquith, born Emma Alice Margaret Asquith, was a British socialite, writer, diarist, and autobiographer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Born on 2 February 1864 in Peeblesshire, she held citizenship of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and later of the United Kingdom. She became Countess of Oxford and Asquith, a title by which she was also formally identified. Throughout her life she was known publicly by the name Margot Asquith, the designation under which her written works circulated and by which she was recognized in literary and social circles.
She worked in the English language across the occupations of writer, diarist, and autobiographer, producing a body of work that drew on her experiences and observations. Her practice of diary-keeping ran alongside her broader authorial output, and both activities placed her in the tradition of personal, reflective prose. As an autobiographer she recorded her own life and the world around her in direct, first-person terms, a mode that suited her role as a prominent figure in British social life.
Asquith died on 28 July 1945 in Greater London. Her writing, produced across a life that spanned more than eight decades, was conducted consistently in English and rooted in the autobiographical and diaristic forms that defined her literary identity.
Quotes by Margot Asquith
All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light...
Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it is not enough to say “I am doing no harm,” I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.
I do not say I was ever what I would call “plain,” but I have the sort of face that bores me when I see it on other people.
Till I see money spent on the betterment of man instead of on his idleness and destruction, I shall not believe in any perfect form of government...
Rich men’s houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty.
There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs – apart from discernment – a certain greatness to find him.
My father’s nature turned out no waste product; he had none of that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He took his own happiness with him.
