Top 140 Dodie Smith Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 3 of 3

101. “I really am just as discontented, but I don’t seem to notice it so much.”

— Dodie Smith

102. “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.”

— Dodie Smith

103. “When things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn’t safe.”

— Dodie Smith

104. “I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold.”

— Dodie Smith

105. “I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future – and, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future.”

— Dodie Smith

106. “But during the many happy hours that Cadpig was to sit watching it in the warm kitchen she never liked it quite so much as that other television, that still silent television she had seen on Christmas Eve when the puppies had rested so peacefully in that strange lofty building. She often remembered that building and wondered who owned it. Someone very kind she was sure for in front of every one of the many seats there had been a little carpet-eared puppy-sized dog-bed.”

— Dodie Smith

107. “I feel quite unreasonably happy this minute, watching them both; knowing I can go and join them in the warmth, yet staying here in the cold.”

— Dodie Smith

108. “I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life – despite sorrow for Father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen’s poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family’s general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.”

— Dodie Smith

109. “I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later.”

— Dodie Smith

110. “I think your father believes that the interest so many people take in puzzles and problems – which often starts in earliest childhood – represents more than a mere desire for recreation; that it may even derive from man’s eternal curiosity about his origin. Anyway, it makes use of certain faculties for progressive, cumulative search which no other mental exercise does.”

— Dodie Smith

111. “Doing things for others gives you a lovely glow.” “So does port,” I said cynically.”

— Dodie Smith

112. “Is it awful to join in this planning? Is it trying to sell one’s sister? But surely Rose can manage to fall in love with them – I mean, with whichever one will fall in love with her. I hope it will be Neil, because I really do think Simon is a little frightening – only it is Neil who thinks England is a joke.”

— Dodie Smith

113. “They’d be all right if it was midsummer,” said Rose, when we tried them on. “But in April – – !” Still, we decided to wear them if the fine weather held. And when we woke up yesterday it was more like June than April. Oh, it was the most glorious morning! I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer. It certainly helps one to believe in Him.”

— Dodie Smith

114. “The Vicar isn’t High Church enough for confessions, and certainly most of me would have loathed to tell him or anybody else one word; but I did have a feeling that a person as wretched as I was ought to be able to get some sort of help from the Church. Then I told myself that as I never gave the Church a thought when I was feeling happy, I could hardly expect it to do anything for me when I wasn’t. You can’t get insurance money without paying in premiums.”

— Dodie Smith

115. “Our Clare doesn’t much care for real life,′ Drew told Jane. ‘What she needs is to live in a book– the kind that no longer gets written.”

— Dodie Smith

116. “The caravans bark but the dogs move on.”

— Dodie Smith

117. “And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any luxury that I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit wrong in it. Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable.”

— Dodie Smith

118. “What I’d really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but happiness to look forward to.”

— Dodie Smith

119. “We used to manage quite well when she was away sitting for artists, because in those days we lived mostly on bread, vegetables and eggs; but now that we can afford some meat or even chickens, I keep coming to grief. I scrubbed some rather dirty-looking chops with soap which proved very lingering, and I did not take certain things out of a chicken that I ought to have done. Even.”

— Dodie Smith

120. “Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known.”

— Dodie Smith

121. “My whole heart was so full of Simon that even my pity for Stephen wasn’t quite real – it was only something I felt I ought to feel, more from my head than my heart. And I knew I ought to pity him all the more because I could pity him so little.”

— Dodie Smith

122. “No, that was my privilege.”

— Dodie Smith

123. “Neil is wearing a coat such as I never saw in my life before: checked back and front, but plain sleeves. Perhaps it was made out of two old coats – though I hope not, as that would show him to be poor and his brother mean. And it looked rather a noisily new coat. I expect it’s just American.”

— Dodie Smith

124. “You see, you have classical features,” I explained, in a matter-of-fact voice. “It seems a waste when I’m not a gentleman.” He grinned – a little sarcastic sort of grin. “Don’t talk like that,” I said quickly. “Gentlemen are men who behave like gentlemen. And you certainly do.” He shook his head. “You can only be a gentleman if you’re born one, Miss Cassandra.” “Stephen, that’s old-fashioned nonsense,” I said. “Really, it is. And, by the way, will you please stop calling me ‘Miss’ Cassandra.”

— Dodie Smith

125. “I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.”

— Dodie Smith

126. “And I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard. For she is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare.”

— Dodie Smith

127. “Ik schrijf dit terwijl ik in de gootsteen zit.”

— Dodie Smith

128. “Well, for inexperienced pray-ers it sometimes is. You see, they’re apt to think of God as a slot-machine. If nothing comes out they say ‘I knew dashed well it was empty’ – when the whole secret of prayer is knowing the machine’s full.” “But how can one know?” “By filling it oneself.” “With faith?” “With faith.”

— Dodie Smith

129. “The pictures are postcard reproductions of Old Masters. She has lots of metal animals about an inch long, little wooden shoes, painted boxes only big enough to hold stamps.”

— Dodie Smith

130. “I do call it a sign of a beautiful nature if a girl who is in love and surrounded by all the splendour is lonely for her sister.”

— Dodie Smith

131. “I had to do most of my writing in bed at night, which stopped me from encouraging Rose to talk much – not that she had shown signs of wanting to, having taken to going for long walks by herself. This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times.”

— Dodie Smith

132. “I had a scholarship, just as Thomas has at his school; we are tolerably bright.”

— Dodie Smith

133. “Sometimes I try to imagine what happens to characters in books – after the books finish, I mean.”

— Dodie Smith

134. “Ab has just walked in, mewing- it must be tea-time; that cat has a clock in his stomach.”

— Dodie Smith

135. “Any cat can make a house seem haunted.”

— Dodie Smith

136. “A thousand pounds for clothes – when one thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter! Oddly, I have never thought of us as poor people – I mean, I have never been terribly sorry for us, as for the unemployed or beggars; though really we have been rather worse off, being unemployable and with no one to beg from.”

— Dodie Smith

137. “I thought what a good man he is, yet never annoyingly holy. And it struck me for the first time that if such a clever, highly educated man can believe in religion, it is almost impudent of an ignorant person like me to feel bored and superior about it.”

— Dodie Smith

138. “There are some people who always find beauty makes them feel sadder, which is a very mysterious thing.”

— Dodie Smith

139. “And he needs me here – I’m the only one who can cook.” “That’s hardly very important when we’ve nothing to cook,” said Rose. “Could I earn money as a model?” “I’m afraid not,” said Topaz. “Your figure’s too pretty – there isn’t enough drawing in your bones. And you’d never have the patience to sit still. I suppose if nothing turns up I’ll have to go to London. I could send about ten shillings a week home.”

— Dodie Smith

140. “Oh, mother, make the right thing happen for Rose!” – and I had a vision of poor mother scurrying from Heaven to do the best she could. The way one’s mind can dash about just while one opens a window!”

— Dodie Smith

141. “That evening of the row was our lowest depths; miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.”

— Dodie Smith

142. “Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don’t notice it if you are born with it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.”

— Dodie Smith

143. “Then he said that art could state very little – that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments – such as father’s – all art would stagnate.”

— Dodie Smith

144. “I kept thinking of them as dead feet. “There are dozens of linen handkerchiefs, that’s something,” said Rose. But I hated the handkerchiefs – and the gloves and the stockings; and a dreadful pair of broken-looking corsets. “People’s clothes ought to be buried with them,” I said. “They oughtn’t to be left behind to be despised.” “I’m not despising them,” said Rose. “Some of these suits are made of wonderful cloth.”

— Dodie Smith

145. “Unfortunately, the more my mind’s eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem.”

— Dodie Smith