Top 120 Elizabeth von Arnim Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Imagine, thought Scrap, having most of one’s life at the wrong end. Imagine being old for two or three times as long as being young. Stupid, stupid.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

52. “And the more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

53. “But while admiring my neighbour, I don’t think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

54. “But of what use is it to be whitewashed and trim outside, to have pleasant creepers and tidy shutters, when inside one’s soul wanders through empty rooms, mournfully shivers in damp and darkness, is hungry and no one brings it food, is cold and no one lights a fire, is miserable and tired and there’s no chair to sit on?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

55. “True she was old, true she was unbeautiful, true she therefore had no reason to smile, but kind ladies smiled, reason or no. They smiled not because they were happy but because they wished to make happy.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

56. “Well, she had had the most wonderful summer; she had got that anyhow tucked away up the sleeve of her memory, and could bring it out and look at it when the days were wet and she felt cold and sick.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

57. “Perhaps,′ she said, leaning forward a little, ‘you will tell me your name. If we are to be friends’ – she smiled her grave smile – ’as I hope we are, we had better begin at the beginning.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

58. “Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of a husband.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

59. “Such a little difference in Susie’s ways and ideas would make them all so happy; such a little change in Peter’s habits would make his wife’s life radiant. But they all lived blindly, on, each day a day of emptiness, each of those precious days, so crowded with opportunities, and possibilities, and unheeded blessings, and presently life would be behind them, and their chances gone for ever.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

60. “Oh of course – how ridiculous of me!” cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing scarlet. “It’s because” – she floundered – “it’s because the immortals somehow still seem alive, don’t they – as if they were here, going to walk into the room in another minute – and one forgets they are dead. In fact one knows perfectly well that they’re not dead – not nearly so dead as you and I even now,” she assured.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

61. “Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was – the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

62. “It might have been the entrance to some holy place, so strange and solemn was the quiet; and looking from out of its shadows to the brightness shining at the upper end where the sun was flooding the bracken with happy morning radiance, I felt suddenly that my walk had ceased to be a common thing, and that I was going up into the temple of God to pray.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

63. “Once more she had that really rather disgusting suspicion that her life till now had not only been loud but empty.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

64. “Her great dead friends did not seem worth reading that night. They always said the same things now – over and over again they said the same things, and nothing new was to be got out of them any more for ever. No doubt they were greater than any one was now, but they had this immense disadvantage, that they were dead. Nothing further was to be expected of them; while of the living, what might one not still expect?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

65. “You mustn’t long in heaven,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “You’re supposed to be quite complete there. And it is heaven, isn’t it, Rose? See how everything has been let in together – the dandelions and the irises, the vulgar and the superior, me and Mrs. Fisher – all welcome, all mixed up anyhow, and all so visibly happy and enjoying ourselves.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

66. “It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the very most beautiful things in life.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

67. “Give me a book. There is no present I care about but that.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

68. “I don’t believe there was ever anybody who loved being happy as much as I did. What I mean is that I was so acutely conscious of being happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn’t ever bored, and was always and continuously grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of the world.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

69. “Rose’s own experience was that goodness, the state of being good, was only reached with difficulty and pain. It took a long time to get to it; in fact one never did get to it, or, if for a flashing instant one did, it was only for a flashing instant. Desperate perseverance was needed to struggle along its path, and all the way was dotted with doubts.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

70. “What a place for him who intends to pass an examination, to write a book, or who wants the crumples got by crushing together too long with his fellows to be smoothed out of his soul.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

71. “It cannot be right to be the slave of one’s household gods, and I protest that if my furniture ever annoyed me by wanting to be dusted when I wanted to be doing something else, and there was no one to do the dusting for me, I would cast it all into the nearest bonfire and sit and warm my toes at the flames with great contentment, triumphantly selling my dusters to the very next pedlar who was weak enough to buy them. Parsons.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

72. “Well, trials are the portion of mankind, and gardeners have their share, and in any case it is better to be tried by plants than persons, seeing that with plants you know that it is you who are in the wrong, and with persons it is always the other way about – and who is there among us who has not felt the pangs of injured innocence, and known them to be grievous?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

73. “She had a sad face, yet she was evidently efficient. The combination used to make Mrs. Wilkins wonder, for she had been told by Mellersh, on days when she had only been able to get plaice, that if one were efficient one wouldn’t be depressed, and that if one does one’s job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk. About.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

74. “When I got to the library I came to a standstill, – ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

75. “A great need of something to lean on, and a great weariness of independence and responsibility took possession of my soul; and looking round for support and comfort in that transitory mood, the emptiness of the present and the blankness of the future sent me back to the past with all its ghosts.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

76. “Nobody could have put her in the shade, blown out her light that evening; she was too evidently shining.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

77. “After tea, when both Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline had disappeared again – it was quite evident that nobody wanted her – she was more dejected than ever, overwhelmed by the discrepancy between the splendour outside her, the warm, teeming beauty and self-sufficiency of nature, and the blank emptiness of her heart.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

78. “I was for ever making plans, and if nothing came of them, what did it matter? The mere making had been a joy.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

79. “Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. She had gone to sleep on these facts years ago, after a period of much misery, her head resting on them as on a pillow; and she had a great dread of being awakened out of so simple and untroublesome a condition.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

80. “And then when I got home I burrowed about among my books, arranging their volumes and loving the feel of them.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

81. “How is it that you should feel so vastly superior whenever you do not happen to enter into or understand your neighbour’s thoughts when, as a matter of fact, your not being able to do so is less a sign of folly in your neighbour than of incompleteness in yourself?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

82. “Sleep and food; they focussed everything. She must remember that. Next time anybody annoyed her, she would first go to sleep, and then eat eggs and bacon.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

83. “Things were a little untidy, but what did that matter? It was possible to become the slave of things; possible to miss life in preparation for living.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

84. “Not the least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbour. If you have to have neighbours at all, it is at least a mercy that there should be only one; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

85. “In this part of the world, the more you are pleased to see a person, the less is he pleased to see you; whereas if you are disagreeable, he will grow pleasant visibly, his countenance expanding into wider amiability the more your own is stiff and sour.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

86. “What fun it all was, she thought, and how entirely new and delicious being taken care of as though she were a thing that mattered, a precious thing!”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

87. “The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter,” Elizabeth wrote in the German Garden, “not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every step.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

88. “Love, even universal love, the kind of love with which she felt herself flooded, should not be tried. Much patience and self-effacement were needed for successful married sleep. Placidity; a steady faith; these too were needed.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

89. “He seemed a jovial, simple man, and had the eyes of a nice dog.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

90. “How good it is to look sometimes across great spaces, to lift one’s eyes from narrowness, to feel the large silence that rests on lonely hills!”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

91. “In April, you know, it’s simply a mass of flowers. And then there’s the sea. You must wear white. You’ll fit in very well. There are several portraits of you there.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

92. “This separate life, this freezing loneliness, she had had enough of it. Why shouldn’t she too be happy? Why on earth – the energetic expression matched her mood of rebelliousness – shouldn’t she too be loved and allowed to love?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

93. “Nobody listened. Nobody took any notice of Mrs Wilkins. She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible, her face was non-arresting, her conversation was reluctant, she was shy. And if one’s clothes and face and conversation are all negligible, though Mrs Wilkins – who recognised her disabilities – what, at parties, is there left of one?”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

94. “We are neither of us wise, but it is surprising how talking to a friend, even to a friend as unwise as yourself, clears up your brains and lets in new light.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

95. “Why, one person in the world, one single person belonging to one, of one’s very own, to talk to, to take care of, to love, to be interested in, was worth more than all the speeches on platforms and the compliments of chairmen in the world. It was also worth more – Rose couldn’t help it, the thought would come – than all the prayers.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

96. “They were just cups of acceptance.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

97. “Certainly he did seem to be one of those men, rare in her experience, who never looked at a woman from the predatory angle. The comfort of this, the simplification it brought into the relations of the party, was immense. From this point of view Mr Wilkins was simply ideal; he was unique and precious.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

98. “I have a peculiar capacity for doing nothing and yet enjoying myself.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

99. “It has been funny and delightful, that little interlude of admiration, but of course it couldn’t go on once Caroline appeared. Rose knew her place.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim

100. “There were many things she disliked more than anything else, and one was when the elderly imagined they felt young and behaved accordingly.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim