{"author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim","total_quotes":34,"quotes":[{"text":"What a blessing it is to love books.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["book-lovers","reading"],"id":26171,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["solitude","soul"],"id":28321,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"In the summer,on fine evenings, I love to drive late andalone in the scented forests, and when I havereached a dark part stop, and sit quite still, listeningto the nightingales repeating their little tune overand over aga^n after interludes of gurgling, or ifthere are no nightingales, listening to the marvelloussilence, and letting its blessedness descend intomy very souL The nightingales in the forestsabout here all sing the same tune, and in the samekey of (E flat).","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["silence"],"id":35074,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"Always being there was the essential secret for a wife.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["married-life","wife","wifely-duty"],"id":36902,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"Nobody told me about him [my grandfather], and he died when I was six, and yet within the last year or two, that strange Indian summer of remembrance that comes to us in the leisured times when the children have been born and we have time to think, has made me know him perfectly well. It is rather an uncomfortable thought for the grown-up, and especially for the parent, but of a salutary and restraining nature, that though children may not understand what is said and done before them, and have no interest in it at the time, and though they may forget it at once and for years, yet these things that they have seen and heard and not noticed have after all impressed themselves for ever on their minds, and when they are men and women come crowing back with surprising and often painful distinctness, and away frisk all the cherished little illusions in flocks.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["memory"],"id":46143,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the first catch of the breath, the first gulp of misery, we turn our eyes with all their old eagerness to a point a little further along the road.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["expectancy","expectation","hope","hoping","life","life-and-living"],"id":75909,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["depression","weather","wry-humor"],"id":80505,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"These women accept their beatings with a simplicity worthy of all praise, and far from considering themselves insulted, admire the strength and energy of the man who can administer such eloquent rebukes. In Russia, not only may a man beat his wife, but it is laid down in the catechism and taught all boys at the time of confirmation as necessary at least once a week, whether she has done anything or not, for the sake of her general health and happiness.'I thought I observed a tendency in the Man of Wrath rather to gloat over these castigations.'Pray, my dear man,' I said, pointing with my whip, 'look at that baby moon so innocently peeping at us over the edge of the mist just behind that silver birch; and don't talk so much about women and things you don't understand. What is the use of your bothering about fists and whips and muscles and all the dreadful things invented for the confusion of obstreperous wives? You know you are a civilised husband, and a civilised husband is a creature who has ceased to be a man.'And a civilised wife?' he asked, bringing his horse close up beside me and putting his arm round my waist, 'has she ceased to be a woman?'I should think so indeed,--she is a goddess, and can never be worshipped and adored enough.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["civilized","feminism","goddess","man","woman"],"id":89511,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"One should continue (of course with dignity) to develop, however old one may be. She had nothing against developing, against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive one was not dead -obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change, ripening, were life.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["development","life"],"id":101255,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"},{"text":"Love is not a thing you can pick up and throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in that sordid place.","author":"Elizabeth von Arnim","tags":["heartbreak","love","trust"],"id":111298,"author_id":"Elizabeth+von+Arnim"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":34,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}