Nancy Mitford Quotes

An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off; it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.

In France that is the one rule, never make trouble.

Surely a King who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory?

One thing about tourists is that it is very easy to get away from them. Like ants they follow a trail and a few yards each side of that trail there are none.

The kentish week-enders on their way to church were appalled by the sight of four great hounds in full cry after two little girls. My uncle seemed to them like a wicked lord of fiction, and I became more than ever surrounded with an aura of madness, badness, and dangerousness for their children to know.

Most people like reading about what they already know - there is even a public for yesterday's weather.

Oh! How like a woman," Davey said. "Sex, my dear Sadie, is not a sovereign cure for everything, you know. I only wish it were.

What is so nice & so unexpected about life is the way it improves as it goes along. I think you should impress this fact on your children because I think young people have an awful feeling that life is slipping past them & they must do something - catch something - they don't quite know what, whereas they've only got to wait & it all comes.

Greece is not a country of happy mediums: everything there seems to be either wonderful or horrible ...

Nothing makes people crosser than being considered too old for love ...

It's a funny thing that people are always ready to admit it if they've no talent for drawing or music, whereas everyone imagines that they themselves are capable of true love, which is a talent like any other, only far more rare.

Isn't it lovely to be lovely me!

I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing.

One's emotions are intensified in Paris - one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town.

Indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves.

The test of a cook is how she boils an egg. My boiled eggs are fantastic, fabulous. Sometimes as hard as a 100 carat diamond, or again soft as a feather bed, or running like a cooling stream, they can also burst like fireworks from their shells and take on the look and rubbery texture of a baby octopus. Never a dull egg, with me.

Sun, silence, and happiness.

They could not help loving anything that made them laugh. The Lisbon earthquake was "embarrassing to the physicists and humiliating to theologians" (Barbier). It robbed Voltaire of his optimism. In the huge waves which engulfed the town, in the chasms which opened underneath it, in volcanic flames which raged for days in the outskirts, some 50,000 people perished. But to the courtiers of Louis XV it was an enormous joke. M. de Baschi, Madame de Pompadour's brother-in-law, was French Ambassador there at the time. He saw the Spanish Ambassador killed by the arms of Spain, which toppled onto his head from the portico of his embassy; Baschi then dashed into the house and rescued his colleague's little boy whom he took, with his own family, to the country. When he got back to Versailles he kept the whole Court in roars of laughter for a week with his account of it all. "Have you heard Baschi on the earthquake?

If one can't be happy, one must be amused ...

Chickens are cheerless birds, I advise you to keep geese which can be taught to follow like dogs, one needs all the companionship one can get in these days.

English doctors have killed 3/4 of my friends & the joke is the remaining 1/4 go on recommending them, so odd is human nature.

She was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, but it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him.

To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.

Oh my past! It's such a long time ago now.

At this Linda gave up. Children might or might not enjoy air-raids actually in progress, but a child who was not thrilled by the idea of them was incomprehensible to her, and she could not imagine having conceived such a being. Useless to waste any more time and breath on this unnatural little girl.

They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech was worth noting and proclaiming.

She belonged to that rare and objectionable species, the intellectual snob devoid of intellect.

Just at the moment he's writing a book on famine - goodness! it's sad - and there's a dear little Chinese comrade who comes and tells him what famine is like, you never saw such a fat man in your life.

(...) I was dreading the dinner because I knew that once I found myself in the dining-room seated (...), it would no longer be possible to remain a silent spectator, I should be obliged to try and think of things to say. It had been drummed into me all my life (...) that silence at meal times is anti-social.
-'So long as you chatter, Fanny, it's of no consequence what you say (...)

Irish gardens beat all for horror. With 19 gardeners, Lord Talbot of Malahide has produced an affair exactly like a suburban golf course.

Linda's presentation of the 'facts' had been so gruesome that the children left Alconleigh howling dismally, their nerves permanently impaired, their future chances of a sane and happy sex life much reduced.

My dear Lady Kroesig, I have only read one book in my life, and that is 'White Fang.' It's so frightfully good I've never bothered to read another.

Friendship is something to be built up carefully, by people with leisure, it is an art, nature does not enter into it.

Talk about what you know and you won't get so angry

It was furnished neither in good taste nor in bad taste, but simply with no attempt at taste at all ...

Mother, of course, takes a lot of exercise, walks and so on. And every morning she puts on a pair of black silk drawers and a sweater and makes indelicate gestures on the lawn. That's called Building the Body Beautiful. She's mad about it.

You've no idea how long life goes on and how many, many changes it brings. Young people seem to imagine that it's over in a flash, that they do this thing, or that thing, and then die, but I can assure you they are quite wrong.

Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child. Black Beauty now ... !

Americans relate all effort, all work, and all of life itself to the dollar. Their talk is of nothing but dollars.

Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.

The people welcome a new da yas if they were certain of liking it, the shopkeepers pull up their blinds serene in the expectation of good trade, the workers go happily to their work, the people who have sat up all night in night clubs go happily to their rest, the orchestra of motor-car horns, of clanking trams, of whistling policemen tunes up for the daily symphony, and everywhere is joy.

Sonia's terribly fond of juggling with people's lives. I never shall forget when she made me go to her doctor ... I can only say he very nearly killed me. It's not her fault if I'm here today. She's entirely unscrupulous. She gets a hold over people much too easily, with her charm and her prestige, and then forces her own values on them.

I am sometimes bored by people, but never by life.

Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of human beings thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral: the art of living.

If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.

They flourished and shone with jewels, lovely clothes, brilliant hair and dazzling complexions; when they danced they really did seem to float, except when it was the Charleston, and that, though angular, was so accomplished that it made us gasp with admiration. Their conversation was quite evidently both daring and witty, one could see it ran like a river, splashing, dashing, and glittering in the sun. Linda was entranced by them, and decided then and there that she would become one of these brilliant beings and live in their world, even if it took her a lifetime to accomplish.

Sisters are a shield against life's cruel adversity.

As far as I am concerned, all reading is for pleasure.

I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.

It only shows, said Aunt Sadie, that nothing really matters the least bit, so why make these fearful efforts to keep alive?
Oh, but it's the efforts that one enjoys so much, said Davey...

I think Linda realized there and then what it took me years to learn, that the behaviour of civilized man really has nothing to do with nature, that all is artificiality and art more or less perfected.

It was the very worst kind of Banbury-Road house, depressing, with laurels. The front door was opened by a slut. I had never seen a slut before but recognized the genus without difficulty as soon as I set eyes on this one.

The charm of your writing," Evelyn Waugh once wrote to Mitford, "depends on your refusal to recognize a distinction between girlish chatter and literary language.

Do you always laugh when you make love?' said Fabrice.
I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I do. I generally laugh when I'm happy and cry when I'm not. Do you find it odd?

There are worse things than poverty, though I can't for the moment remember what they are ...

Children should be like waffles
you should be able to throw the first one away.

People in towns are always preoccupied. 'Have I missed the bus? Have I forgotten the potatoes? Can I get across the road?

But I couldn't think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife's shawl?