Top 90 Barbara Pym Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It was a cold November day and she had dressed herself up in layers of cardigans and covered the whole lot with her old tweed coat, the one she might have used for feeding the chickens in.”

— Barbara Pym

52. “For I had observed that men did not usually do things unless they liked doing them.”

— Barbara Pym

53. “It would be a reciprocal relationship – the woman giving the food and shelter and doing some typing for him and the man giving the priceless gift of himself,’ said Mark, swaying a little and bumping into a tree. ‘It is commoner in our society than many people would suppose.”

— Barbara Pym

54. “I have often wondered whether it is really a good thing to be honest by nature and upbringing; certainly it is not a good thing socially, for I feel sure that the tea-party would have been more successful had I not explained that the tea was really Indian which I had unfortunately made too weak.”

— Barbara Pym

55. “She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all.”

— Barbara Pym

56. “Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms- often on the bed itself- is another characteristic feature of the English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty five past seven. ‘The evening stretches before us,’ Viola said gloomily.”

— Barbara Pym

57. “One wouldn’t believe there could be so many people, and one must love them all.”

— Barbara Pym

58. “I suppose old atheists seem less wicked and dangerous than young ones,’ said Jane. ‘One feels that there is something of the ancient Greeks in them.”

— Barbara Pym

59. “Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things – enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn’t matter which.”

— Barbara Pym

60. “After all, life was like that for most of us – the small unpleasantnesses rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.”

— Barbara Pym

61. “Also, it was the morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon.”

— Barbara Pym

62. “I wonder if he kissed her, Jane thought. She was surprised to hear that they had had what seemed to be quite an intelligent conversation, for she had never found Fabian very much good in that line. She had a theory that this was why he tended to make love to woman – because he couldn’t really think of much to say to them.”

— Barbara Pym

63. “Miss Limpsett was older, uglier and more untidy than I had remembered. She had obviously had a hard and tiring day, for her grey hair was awry as if she had been running her fingers through it, and there was ink on her fingers. Her face was haggard, and it occurred to me that it was not only this day which had been hard and tiring, but all days and even life itself.”

— Barbara Pym

64. “But now respectable elderly women do not need to excuse themselves for buying brandy or even gin, though it is quite likely that some still do and perhaps one may hope that they always will.”

— Barbara Pym

65. “The lesson started. We were to learn the subjunctive, and I found myself wondering whether I could take so kindly to the Portuguese now that I realized how often they seemed to use it. It seemed as if there were going to be a great many things I couldn’t possibly say.”

— Barbara Pym

66. “Good wine and old books seem to go together.”

— Barbara Pym

67. “Well, I haven’t really anything to eat at home, I began, but then stopped, as I realised that a dreary revelation of the state of one’s larder was hardly the way to respond to an invitation to dinner.”

— Barbara Pym

68. “Such a nice couple they made, Sister Dew thought, seeing him return alone to his own house. She wondered if she should take him one of the steak and kidney pies she had baked that morning, but then – with unusual delicacy – judged it to be not quite the moment. And of course there was no question of taking one to Miss Broome – one did not take cooked food to lone women in the same way as to lone men.”

— Barbara Pym

69. “At least he would be taking away a pot of his favourite jelly, which was a great deal more than one usually got out of trying to interfere in other people’s business.”

— Barbara Pym

70. “Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured.”

— Barbara Pym

71. “Although invariably kind and courteous he had the air of seeming not to be particularly interested in human beings – a somewhat doubtful quality in a parish priest, though it had its advantages.”

— Barbara Pym

72. “But it’s a good feeling and one does so like to have that.”

— Barbara Pym

73. “Disliking humanity in general, she was one of those excessively tender-hearted people who are greatly moved by the troubles of complete strangers, in which she sometimes imagined herself playing a noble part.”

— Barbara Pym

74. “On the threshold of sixty,’ mused Dr. Parnell. ‘That’s a good age for a man to marry. He needs a woman to help him into his grave.”

— Barbara Pym

75. “A room in Holmhurst was the last thing she’d come to – better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaces and the bracken and wait quietly for death.”

— Barbara Pym

76. “But at least it made one realize that life still held infinite possibilities for change.”

— Barbara Pym

77. “At Christmas, Dulcie thought, people seemed to lose their status as individuals in their own right and became, as it were, diminished in stature, mere units in families, when for the rest of the year they were bold and original and often the kind of people it is impossible to imagine having such ordinary everyday things as parents. Christmas put people in their places, sent them back to the nursery or cradle, almost.”

— Barbara Pym

78. “Esther Clovis might not be much of a tea-maker but she had considerable organizing ability and knew how to act in a crisis, as at this moment, confronted with the anthropologists who would not go.”

— Barbara Pym

79. “I’m so glad you write happy endings,’ said Mabel. ‘After all, life isn’t really so unpleasant as some writers make out, is it? she added hopefully. ‘No, perhaps not. It’s comic and sad and indefinite – dull, sometimes, but seldom really tragic or deliriously happy, except when one’s very young.”

— Barbara Pym

80. “The last impression will have been good – one woman rendering homage to a poet and another mopping spilt coffee from the trousers of a critic. Things like that aren’t as trivial as you might think.”

— Barbara Pym

81. “Jane wanted to agree and to offer him the broken dwarf, perhaps for Constance’s grave, as a kind of comment on the futility of earthly love, but instead she said gently, ‘You must make Jessie happy. That will be the right thing for you now.”

— Barbara Pym

82. “When we grow older we lack the fine courage of youth, and even an ordinary task like making a pullover for somebody we love or used to love seems too dangerous to be undertaken.”

— Barbara Pym

83. “It was odd to think that he himself had once been on the threshold of that kind of life and that he had thrown it all away, as it were, to go out to Africa and study the ways of a so-called primitive tribe. For really, when one came to consider it, what could be more primitive than the rigid ceremonial of launching a debutante on the marriage market?”

— Barbara Pym

84. “It is often supposed that those who live and work in academic or intellectual circles are above the petty disputes that vex the rest of us, but it does sometimes seem as if the exalted nature of their work makes it necessary for them to descend occasionally and to refresh themselves, as it were, by squabbling about trivialities.”

— Barbara Pym

85. “Not that the making of tea can ever really be regarded as a petty or trivial matter and Miss Clovis did seem to have been seriously at fault.”

— Barbara Pym

86. “What was the point of living in a suburb if one couldn’t show a healthy curiosity about one’s neighbours?”

— Barbara Pym

87. “A young man in a white coat was pouring some rich fragrant liquid into her cup. She accepted it with gratitude and resignation, for it was strong and bitter, almost medicinal, and as she drank she was conscious that it was doing her good. Tea is more healthy than alcohol and much cheaper, she reflected, and there must be thousands of people who know this.”

— Barbara Pym

88. “Rhoda was not in the least envious of her sister’s fuller life, for now that they were both in their fifties there seemed to be very little difference between them.”

— Barbara Pym

89. “Miss Clovis was acting as secretary to the selection committee and enjoyed the work which was congenial to her natural curiosity about people and her desire to arrange their lives for them.”

— Barbara Pym

90. “Well, I shouldn’t like my wife to do housework in the evenings, would you?’ ‘No, I suppose not, but women usually have their own way.”

— Barbara Pym