Dodie Smith Quotes

If you love people, you take them on trust.

Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.

I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat.

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

Stew's so comforting on a rainy day.

It's a beautiful sight to see good dancers doing simple steps. It's a painful sight to see beginners doing complicated patterns.

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.

I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold

Ham with mustard is a meal of glory

I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?

Oh, comfortable cocoa!

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.

I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.

...I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.

People's clothes ought to be buried with them.

Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.

The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.

There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.

I believe it is customary to get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted-- my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than did.

And at last father flung the rug off as if it were hampering him and strode over to the table saying, 'cocoa, cocoa!'-- it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is.

I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious.

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Wakings are the worst times--almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on my heart.

Prayer's a very tricky business.

I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.

It came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to London - that it has always been , in spirit, a stretch of countryside; and that it links the Londons of all periods together most magically - by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of a ever-changing town.

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me-and I long to mention it myself

I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.

I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England.

I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.

What a tiny list of friends I have! All my fault. I less and less want to see people.

... for I know I shall be interrupted-- I shall want to be, really, because life is too exciting to sit still for long.

The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.

How can a young man like to wear a beard?

Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows.

...With stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down.