Old Maids Quotes

Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity, Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policemen like you. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I have been sorry for married women oftener than for old maids. ~ Florence Converse

But many, many stories were told; from what could be gathered, all fifty of the mine's inhabitants had reacted on each other, two by two, as in combinatorial analysis, that is to say, everyone with all the others, and especially every man with all the women, old maids or married, and every woman with all the men. All I had to do was to select two names at random, better if different sex, and ask a third person, "What happened with those two?" and lo and behold, a splendid story was unfolded for me, since everyone knew the story of everyone else. ~ Primo Levi

The only game I like to play is "Old Maid", providing she's not too old ~ Groucho Marx

Nic's going to be an old maid," Michael said, giggling.
"What?" she snapped. "How do you even know what that means? You're like, four years old."
"Mommy said it," Michael answered.
Bernie coughed, nearly choking on her food as Peter and Xavier laughed into their napkins. ~ Alexandra Adornetto

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle. ~ Edna Ferber

Not only have I been an old maid since my eighteenth birthday, but I'm driving the bandwagon for old maids of America. I might even start an Alliance. Of course, there will be a four-cat minimum for admittance into to organization. Bonus points if you live with your mother. A spot on the board if she happens to be a battle-ax that prefers pond scum sleeping next to her at night. ~ Addison Moore

A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist. ~ John Major

Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name. ~ Florence King

Widows are more skillful anglers for husbands than spinsters, and many marry several times. This is a social injustice to spinsters. "One man one woman," is surely as fair a cry as "One man one vote." As there is scarcely one man for each woman, what right has one woman to two, three, or four men in succession? She may reply, "By the right of conquest." But, then, is she not reducing others to unhappy courses or to become old maids? ... Society, for the interests of all, should discourage the remarriage of widows. ~ Tennessee Celeste Claflin

Old maids do not mind giving people trouble. ~ Thomas Nelson Page

Whaddaya mean 'old maids,' ha? The term is 'unclaimed treasure,' buddy, 'unclaimed treasure! ~ Laurie Notaro

At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be. At thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully. ~ Louisa May Alcott

You can't be a member of the Sinful Ladies Society if you have a husband. The original members, like me, are all old maids. We're finally starting to allow widows in, but their husbands have to be dead for at least ten years.
Why ten years?
Seems to take that long to deprogram them from silly man thinking. ~ Jana Deleon

Right Jo better be happy old maids than unhappy wives or unmaidenly girls running about to find husbands. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Mamey said that in her day a woman who had not married by the age of thirty was called a thornback, named after a flat, spiny, prehistoric-looking fish. ~ Christina Baker Kline

Some women's intended from the start to be old maids, and I'm afraid I'm one of them, Miss Shirley, ma'am, because I've awful little patience with the men. ~ L.M. Montgomery

unless you take the view that footballers should be picked on their form as players, and not for personal considerations.' 'Ah!' said Mr Bowles, 'but that's what Vicar would call a counsel of perfection. People talk a lot about the team spirit and let the best side win, but if you was to sit in this bar and listen to what goes on, it's all spite and jealousy, or else it's how to scrape up enough money to entice away some other team's centre-forward, or it's complaints about favouritism or wrong decisions, or something that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The game's not what it was when I was a lad. Too much commercialism, and enough back-biting to stock an old maids' tea-party. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The fear of being an old maid made young girls rush into matrimony with a recklessness that astonishes. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The world," said Pavone, "will swing to the left. The whole world except America. The world will swing, not because people read Karl Marx, or because agitators will come out of Russia, but because, after the war is over, that will be the only way they can turn. Everything else will have been tried, everything else will have failed. And I am afraid that American will be isolated, hated, backward, we will all be living there like old maids in a lonely house in the woods, locking the doors, looking under the beds, with a fortune in the mattress, not being able to sleep, because every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us and take our treasure ... ~ Irwin Shaw

This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous; he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. Each come just from an admirably appointed establishment: a table surrounded by the best people, their promenade sanctioned, as it were, by Church - two clergy - the State, two Government officials; by mothers, friends, old maids. ~ Ford Madox Ford

Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires, have for the most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them. ~ Honore De Balzac

According to my rule, you can find in every woman something - damn it! - something extraordinarily interesting, something you won't find in any other woman. Only you must know how to find it - that's the point! That requires talent! For me ugly women do not exist: the very fact that she's a woman is half the attraction for me- but how could you understand that? Even in old maids you sometimes find something so attractive that you can't help marvelling at the damn fools who've let them grow old without noticing it! The first thing to do with barefooted girls and ugly women is to take them by surprise - that's how one should deal with them. You didn't know that, did you? They must be surprised till they're enraptured, till they're transfixed, till they're ashamed that such a gentleman should have fallen in love with such a swarthy creature. What's so wonderful is that so long as there are peasants and gentlemen in the world - and there always will be - there will also be such lovely little scullery maids and their masters - that's all one needs for one's happiness. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

I do not think either virginity or old age contemptible, and some of the shrewdest minds I have met inhabited the bodies of old maids. ~ C.S. Lewis

Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist' and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school. ~ John Major

every father wants to see his girls settled and not end up old maids ~ Sinead Moriarty

Of all the old maid's blessing, the greatest is carte blanche. Spinsterhood is powerful; once a woman is called "that crazy old maid" she can get away with anything. ~ Florence King

She was, in truth, one of those bigoted fanatics, one of those stubborn Puritans, whom England breeds in such numbers, those pious and insupportable old maids, who haunt all the tables d'hôte in Europe, who ruin Italy, poison Switzerland, and render the charming towns on the Riviera uninhabitable, introducing everywhere their weird manias, their manners of petrified vestals, their indescribable wardrobes, and a peculiar odour of rubber, as if they were put away in a waterproof case every night. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Most consumers are simultaneously neophilic, curious to discover new things, and deeply neophobic, afraid of anything that is too new. The best hit makers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old, anxiety and understanding. They are architects of familiar surprises. ~ Derek Thompson

So I'm beginning to think that when I'm fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years old I still won't be any closer to being wise and knowledgeable. Perhaps people on their deathbeds, who have had long, long lives, seen it all, travelled the world, have had kids, been through their own personal traumas, beaten their demons and learned the harsh lessons of life will be thinking : God, people in heaven must really know it all. ~ Cecelia Ahern

Old ideas of not trading because 'they won't open their markets to us' miss the entire point of allowing goods to be imported into the United States - because we want and need them and because someone here believes that the good or service received in exchange for our dollars creates value for them. ~ Mike Pompeo

I slept with my mother until I was nine years old. It was OK for the first few years, and then I don't know what happened. I just couldn't do it anymore. I mean, sleeping with the same woman, night after night. Boring! ~ Laura Kightlinger

The man or woman you really love will never grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the bowed frame of years, you will always see the dear face and feel the warm heart union of your eternal love. ~ Alfred Armand Montapert

The presence in the living room called to her, summoning her in a hundred voices and none, a great dissonant harmony alien yet familiar, like a song that, once heard, insinuates itself into one's history, finding echoes in old melodies; a configuration once hidden, now revealed. Step, ~ John Connolly

Throw out old clothes and shoes, and train your brain to get rid of old thoughts and ideas. ~ Karen Salmansohn

I would tell my 14 year old self to never ever, ever put all of your money in one bank account. And love the ones who love you back. You're going to want to quit ... DON'T! Oh, and get everything in writing. ~ Brandi L. Bates

A stranger came out to White Acre one day to sell Henry a pony, for Alma to learn to ride. The pony's name was Soames, and he was the color of sugar icing, and Alma loved him immediately. A price was negotiated. The two men settled on three dollars. Alma, who was only six years old, asked, "Excuse me, sir, but does that price also include the bridle and saddle which the pony is currently wearing?"
The stranger balked at the question, but Henry roared with laughter. "She's got you there, man!" he bellowed, and for the rest of that day, he ruffled Alma's hair whenever she came nearer, saying, "What a good little auctioneer I've got as a daughter! ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

You see yourself as if old and wise.
I see you really miss your childhood. ~ Toba Beta

Louis and Regina found a tiny apartment on Eldridge Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, for $8 a month. Louis then took to the streets, looking for work. He saw peddlers and fruit sellers and sidewalks crammed with pushcarts. The noise and activity and energy dwarfed what he had known in the Old World. He was first overwhelmed, then invigorated. He went ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I can only make one person happy each day.
Today is not your day.
Tomorrow doesn't look good, either.
- Frank the 70 year old secretary, chapter 9 ~ Philip Gulley

But to change an old habit, you must address an old craving. You have to keep the same cues and rewards as before, and feed the craving by inserting a new routine. ~ Charles Duhigg

After graduating early from high school, I carefully listened to the quarterback during my first play in college spring ball. My mind was on the very basics of football: alignment, assignment, and where to stand in the huddle.

The quarterback broke the huddle and I ran to the line, meeting the confident eyes of a defensive end - 6-foot-6, 260- pound Matt Shaughnessy.

I was seventeen, a true freshman, and he was a 23-year-old fifth-year senior, a third-round draft pick. Huge difference between the two of us. Impressing the coach was not on my mind. Survival was. "Oh, Jesus," I said. I wasn't cursing. I was praying for help.

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray ( James 5:13).

That day Matt came off the ball so fast. Bam! Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, thrown to the ground. I got up and limped back to the huddle.

Four years later...standing on the sidelines in my first NFL game, bouncing on my toes, waiting for my chance to go in, one of the tight ends went down. My time to shine! Where do I stand? Who do I have? I look up and meet the same eyes I met on my first play in college football.
Matt Shaughnessy! ... ~ Jake Byrne

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end ... ~ William Butler Yeats

Outside the walls of the Crimson Cabaret was a world of rain and darkness. At intervals, whenever someone entered or exited through the front door of the club, one could actually see the steady rain and was allowed a brief glimpse of the darkness. Inside it was all amber light, tobacco smoke, and the sound of the raindrops hitting the windows, which were all painted black. On such nights, as I sat at one of the tables in that drab little place, I was always filled with an infernal merriment, as if I were waiting out the apocalypse and could not care less about it. I also liked to imagine that I was in the cabin of an old ship during a really vicious storm at sea or in the club car of a luxury passenger train that was being rocked on its rails by ferocious winds and hammered by a demonic rain. Sometimes, when I was sitting in the Crimson Cabaret on a rainy night, I thought of myself as occupying a waiting room for the abyss (which of course was exactly what I was doing) and between sips from my glass of wine or cup of coffee I smiled sadly and touched the front pocket of my coat where I kept my imaginary ticket to oblivion. ~ Thomas Ligotti

I've gotten crankier in my old age. ~ Shirley Maclaine

America is a young country with an old mentality. ~ George Santayana

Our religious systems have taught us to "train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6) I couldn't disagree more. How about, "feed a child what it needs, so when it gets grows up, it will "be" its own unique unpredictably creative self. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly, and Sean Hannity are the Mount Rushmore of keeping old people angry. ~ Joel McHale

They had heroes for companions, beautiful youths to
dream of, rose-marble-fingered
Women shed light down the great lines;
But you have invoked the slime in the skull,
The lymph in the vessels. They have shown men Gods
like racial dreams, the woman's desire,
The man's fear, the hawk-faced prophet's; but nothing
Human seems happy at the feet of yours.
Therefore though not forgotten, not loved, in the gray old
years in the evening leaning
Over the gray stones of the tower-top,
You shall be called heartless and blind. ~ Robinson Jeffers

When I was about 12 years old back in Houston, my Dad used to take us to the driving range. ~ Ron White

in time-out. That's how you're acting - like five-year-olds. It's time you realized that you are sixteen and way too old for this nonsense. And you ~ Holly Jacobs

Ever since I was 12 years old I had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don't. If metal doesn't give that overwhelming surge of power that make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you might never get it, and you know what? That's okay, because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me we're doing just fine without you ~ Sam Dunn

All the visitors do make an effort to look their best and it's very tender, it's sweet as hell, the way the women wear their prettiest everything, I mean the old ones and the really poor ones too, they make the dearest effort to look nice and smell nice too, and I love them for it. I love the kids too, especially the colored ones. I mean the kids the wives bring. It should be sad, seeing the kids there, but it isn't, they have ribbons in their hair and lots of shine on their shoes, you'd think there was going to be ice cream; and sometimes that's what it's like in the visitors' room, a party. Anyway, it's not like the movies: you know, grim whisperings through a grille. There isn't any grille, just a counter between you and them, and the kids can stand on it to be hugged; all you have to do to kiss somebody is lean across. What I like most, they're so happy to see each other, they've saved up so much to talk about, it isn't possible to be dull, they keep laughing and holding hands. It's different afterwards," she said. "I see them on the train. They sit so quiet watching the river go by. ~ Truman Capote

I haven't changed my views much since I was about 12, really, I've just got a 12-year-old mentality.When I was in school I had a brother who was into Kerouac and he gave me On The Road to read when I was 12 years old. That's still been a big influence. ~ David Bowie

Do not be taken in or flattered by your own success or fame. Take not only as to whether or not the old creation, including everything which comes by birth, has gone through the cross. ~ Watchman Nee

somebody had taken an old disk of McCartney and the Wings - as in the historical Beatles's McCartney - taken and run it through a Kurtzweil remixer and removed every track on the songs except the tracks of poor old Mrs. Linda McCartney singing backup and playing tambourine.
...

Poor old Mrs. Linda McCartney just fucking could not sing, and having her shaky off-key little voice flushed from the cover of the whole slick multitrack corporate sound and pumped up to solo was to Gately unspeakably depressing - her voice sounding so lost, trying to hide and bury itself inside the pro backups' voices; Gately imagined Mrs. Linda McCartney - in his Staff room's wall's picture a kind of craggy-face blonde - imagined her standing there lost in the sea of her husband's pro noise, feeling low esteem and whispering off-key, not knowing quite when to shake her tambourine: C's depressing CD was past cruel, it was somehow sadistic-seeming, like drilling a peephole in the wall of a handicapped bathroom. ~ David Foster Wallace

I tried to remember what Rita had said about being a bigger person. I could either calmly tell him that he was mistaken or let him have it. I could be the bigger person or I could be like any normal sixteen-year-old.
Like there really was a choice.
"First off, you ever call me a babe again and no medical team on earth will be able to tell that you were once a guy."
I was only sixteen after all. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg

An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song's sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words. ~ Boris Pasternak

Bad tactics, and whoever this Caladan Brood is, he's shown himself adept at making us pay for our mistakes." "Caladan Brood," Calot murmured. "I swear I've heard that name somewhere before. Odd that I've never given it much thought." Tattersail's eyes narrowed on Tayschrenn. Calot was right: the name of the man commanding the Tiste Andii alongside the Crimson Guard did sound familiar - but in an old way, echoing ancient legends, perhaps, or some epic poem. ~ Steven Erikson

When you open box after box of old comics and they're ALL "Archie," you have suffered a trauma from which it is difficult to ever recover. ~ John McLaughlin

The garden was the most beautiful place Margherita had ever seen. In spring, it was a sea of delicate blossom. In summer, it was green and fruitful. In autumn, the trees blazed gold and red and orange, as vivid as Margherita's hair. Even in winter, it was beautiful, with bare branches against the old stone walls and green hedges in curves and curlicues about beds of winter-flowering herbs and flowers. ~ Kate Forsyth

I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete. [ ... ] This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women. ~ Oscar Niemeyer

I love the optimism on the shores of youth, where time hasn't yet eroded faith. ~ Amy Neftzger

Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine. ~ William Wordsworth

I think they look upon me as an old child, because I'm so little. ~ Estelle Getty

The girl who grew up watching old Madonna videos wants to embrace my sexual freedom ~ Lex Martin

I just don't have time to get old! ~ Dolly Parton

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example. ~ Alexander Pope

What a relief. I didn't have to check the toilet for anything or the light bulbs or the phone. It was just good old-fashioned friendship. ~ Julia Roberts