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I suppose we are apt to attribute to them all the virtues they preach.
Barbara Pym
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I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.
Barbara Pym
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It was often difficult to think of an apt quotation when one was in a hurry.
Barbara Pym
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The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.
Barbara Pym
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Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.
Barbara Pym
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Those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well-read man.
Barbara Pym
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Everything he didn't particularly want to do was described by Humphrey as 'good experience'.
Barbara Pym
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One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning.
Barbara Pym
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Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there...
Barbara Pym
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Oh how absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself! Everybody should try it.
Barbara Pym
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There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.
Barbara Pym
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This was one of Cassandra's special virtues, that she anticipated her husband's wishes almost before he knew what they were.
Barbara Pym
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What a good thing there is no marriage or giving in marriage in the after-life; it will certainly help to smooth things out.
Barbara Pym
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There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It's sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that's all.
Barbara Pym
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I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
Barbara Pym
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I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.
Barbara Pym
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Miss Doggett again looked puzzled; it was as if she had heard that men only wanted one thing, but had forgotten for the moment what it was.
Barbara Pym
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She experienced all the cosiness and irritation which can come from living with thoroughly nice people with whom one has nothing in common.
Barbara Pym
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She had now reached an age when one starts looking for a husband rather more systematically than one does at nineteen or even at twenty-one.
Barbara Pym
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Inanimate objects were often so much nicer than people, she thought. What person, for example, could possibly be so comforting as one's bed?
Barbara Pym
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It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind.
Barbara Pym
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I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion.
Barbara Pym
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There was something about the idea of an orphan that brought out the best in Humphrey, that desire to do good without too much personal inconvenience that lurks in most of us.
Barbara Pym
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I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person.
Barbara Pym
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My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.
Barbara Pym
Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Barbara Pym
Born:
June 2, 1913
Died:
January 11, 1980
(aged 66)
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