Mary Russell Mitford Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

'Jane Eyre' is a coarse book, I think, and one to which nobody will return.

Mary Russell Mitford
No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks each day.

Mary Russell Mitford
The slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling, as the sun and rain foster your favourite flowers. Cherish kind wishes, my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice.

Mary Russell Mitford
There was no getting away from her hearty hospitality, no escaping her prodigality of presents. It was dangerous to praise or even to approve of any thing belonging to herself in her hearing; if it had been the carpet under her feet or the shawl on her shoulders, either would instantly have been stripped off to offer.

Mary Russell Mitford
Does it not appear to you that versatility is the true and rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius — versatility and playfulness? In my mind they are both essential.

Mary Russell Mitford
I detest so much... those persons, who insist upon telling you everything — who labor every point, as the lawyers say, as if they thought all excellence consisted in length.

Mary Russell Mitford
I have still the best comforts of life — books and friendships — and I trust never to lose my relish for either.

Mary Russell Mitford
Enthusiasm is very catching, especially when it is very eloquent.

Mary Russell Mitford
Her father doted upon her and thought her the most accomplished young woman of the age; for certain, she could play a little, and sing a little, and paint a little, and talk a little very bad French, and dance and dress a great deal.

Mary Russell Mitford
We may admire people for being wise, but we like them best when they are foolish.

Mary Russell Mitford
That bad letters of every kind arise from want of the habit of thinking, I cannot doubt.

Mary Russell Mitford
Your conversation is a spring that never fails, never overflows.

Mary Russell Mitford
I prepare myself for all disappointments by expecting nothing...

Mary Russell Mitford
Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.

Mary Russell Mitford
I do not think very highly of Madame D'Arblay's books. The style is so strutting. She does so stalk about on Dr. Johnson's old stilts.

Mary Russell Mitford
The power of admiring whatever is deserving of admiration, the nice and quick perception of the beautiful and the true, is one of the highest and noblest of our faculties, born of taste, and knowledge, and wisdom, or rather it is taste, and wisdom, and knowledge, in one rare and great combination.

Mary Russell Mitford
A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of waxwork.

Mary Russell Mitford
In our present high state of civilization, people are so much alike, that anything at all odd comes on one with the freshness and character of an antique coin among smooth shillings.

Mary Russell Mitford
Prejudices of taste, likings and dislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason.

Mary Russell Mitford
One's conscience may be pretty well absolved for not admiring this man: he admires himself enough for all the world put together.

Mary Russell Mitford
I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly people who take no delight in them.

Mary Russell Mitford
Trees and children are, of all living things, those whose growth soonest makes one feel one's age.

Mary Russell Mitford
I wonder by what accident Miss Seward came by her fame. Setting aside her pedantry and presumption, there is no poet male or female who ever clothed so few ideas in so many words.

Mary Russell Mitford
The gentlewoman is touchy. This affliction has given a color to her whole life. Her biography has a certain martial dignity, like the history of a nation; she dates from battle to battle, and passes her days in an interminable civil war.

Mary Russell Mitford
That letter of hers came upon me like a kiss, so short, so sudden, and so affectionate.

Mary Russell Mitford
Well, great authors are great people — but I believe that they are best seen at a distance.

Mary Russell Mitford
They know little of the passions who seek to argue with that most intractable of them all, the fear that is born of love.

Mary Russell Mitford
I have discovered that our great favorite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman... with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.

Mary Russell Mitford
You must not mind her talking most to Mr. Hofland: she never does talk to a lady when a gentleman is by.

Mary Russell Mitford
Till Pride and Prejudice showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; she is still a poker—but a poker of whom every one is afraid.
Of Jane Austen

Mary Russell Mitford