Top 250 Georgette Heyer Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “And I am very uncomfortable in these clothes. I think too that I am a little frightened. There is not even M. Davenant left. I shall be forced to eat pudding, and that woman will kiss me.’ She heaved a large sigh. ‘Life is very hard,’ she remarked sadly.”

— Georgette Heyer

202. “Providence has decreed that he should succeed to his dear father’s honours,’ pronounced the Dowager, thinking poorly of Providence.”

— Georgette Heyer

203. “I hardly dare open my mouth,” drawled Gideon, “but there is much in what he says, Gaywood. I don’t reckon myself a mean shot, but I would think twice before I engaged in pistol-play with Sale. And you won’t hit him you know. He is such a little fellow, and you are such a damnably bad shot!”

— Georgette Heyer

204. “Dear Papa, it seemed, had not left his family in affluent circumstances; but he had certainly endowed them with good looks, a commodity in which they had been bred from earliest youth to trade to the best advantage.”

— Georgette Heyer

205. “But time was slipping away; in another minute it would be too late; and urgency acted not as a spur but as a creeping paralysis which clogged the mind, and weighted the tongue, and imposed on desperation a blanket of numb stupidity.”

— Georgette Heyer

206. “But as for Thaddeus Drybeck, words fail me!’ The Inspector, placing no dependence on this statement, waited for her to continue.”

— Georgette Heyer

207. “True it is, miss, though I blush to say it! With his own eyes did Totton see him!’‘He could hardly have seen him with anyone else’s eyes!’ snapped Miss Trent, her temper fraying.”

— Georgette Heyer

208. “You’re surely not going to tell me that eels find you more entertaining than I do?’ he said incredulously.”

— Georgette Heyer

209. “Your presence in England is extremely – shall we say enlivening? – Vidal. But I believe I shall survive the loss of it.”

— Georgette Heyer

210. “For himself, Sir Waldo was resigned to an evening’s boredom, denied even the amusement of pursuing his acquaintance with the lady who disapproved of him.”

— Georgette Heyer

211. “Only if one was very cruel did one laugh at a boy in the throes of his first love.”

— Georgette Heyer

212. “It seemed to him that Serena brought light into a sunless room, and it never occurred to him that anyone could find it too strong.”

— Georgette Heyer

213. “Let me tell you, Mr Grantham, that there would have been more hope of winning my consent to your suit if you had come here to quarrel with me!′ said Ravenscar cuttingly. ‘When my sister marries it will be to someone with more spirit in him! Why, you comtemtible little worm, if you had a spark of pride or courage you would be calling me out, not offering to set me free! Your sister is worth a dozen of you! And she’s a Jade!”

— Georgette Heyer

214. “It is high time you realised that you are of age, and may do as you please. Now, be off, and don’t neglect to change your stockings!”

— Georgette Heyer

215. “You were not acquainted with my father, Mr Morville. I have often been sorry that you were not, for you would have been excessively pleased with one another. My father was a great reader, though not, of course, during the hunting-season.”

— Georgette Heyer

216. “Help a smuggler!’ said Miss Thane in shocked accents. ‘My good man, do you know that you are addressing the sister of a Justice of the Peace? Let me tell you that my brother, who is in the house at this moment, holds the strongest views on smugglers and smuggled goods!’ This, after all, she reflected, was quite true, and ought to impress the Exciseman – provided, of course, that Sir Hugh did not take it into his head to appear suddenly and explain the nature of his views.”

— Georgette Heyer

217. “An acrimonious dispute between Leslie and Buckingham caused the King to remark to the Lord Talbot somewhat bitterly that although he could not get Leslie’s horse to stand by him against the enemy, it seemed that he could not get rid of them now, when he had a mind to it.”

— Georgette Heyer

218. “Lady Sheringham, having provided herself with a smelling-bottle to fortify her nerves during an interview with her only child, removed the stopper and inhaled feebly. ‘I am sure I do not know what would become of me if I had not my good brother to support me in my lonely state,’ she said, in the faint, complaining tone which so admirably concealed a constitution of iron and a strong determination to have her own way.”

— Georgette Heyer

219. “He had expected to have been received, if not with gratification, at least with pleasure: it had been a piece of condescension on the part of the head of the family to have visited its reprobate, but the reprobate was apparently unaware of this.”

— Georgette Heyer

220. “I may be a little fool,’ retorted Miss Challoner, plucking up spirit, ’but at least I meant it for the best. While as for you, my lord, you meant nothing but wicked mischief right from the start.”

— Georgette Heyer

221. “Tell him that I shan’t interfere in any way! I shall, of course, but he will never know it, so you needn’t scruple to say that, dearest!”

— Georgette Heyer

222. “For a perilous moment, she hovered on the brink of losing her temper, but her ever- ready sense of the absurd came to her rescue, and instead of yielding to the impulse to come to points with him she broke into sudden laughter, and said: ‘How unhandsome of you to have given me such a set- down, when I had already begged your pardon!’ ‘How unjust of you to accuse me of giving you a set- down when all I did was to agree with you!’ he retorted.”

— Georgette Heyer

223. “There is a corpse somewhere on the road to town. Mr Fox does not wish it there. Remove it!”

— Georgette Heyer

224. “But the very qualities which had fascinated Denville in the girl offended him in the wife...”

— Georgette Heyer

225. “Then you,’ said Sophy, ‘are Lord Charlbury!’ He bowed. ‘I am, and I perceive that my fame has gone before me. I own, I should not have chosen to figure in your mind as the man with mumps, but so, I see, it is!”

— Georgette Heyer

226. “The Rector, coming into the room and learning what was the subject under discussion, said that since the world began each generation had condemned the manners and customs of the next.”

— Georgette Heyer

227. “My Lord Bedlington had not kept company with the Regent for years without acquiring a hard head and the digestion of an ostrich. Mellow he might become, and indiscreet stories he certainly told, but not his worst enemy would have accused him of being foxed.”

— Georgette Heyer

228. “Wrotham had been inspired at the eleventh hour to send the flowers with the second of his messages in place of the first. Wear these, and I shall know what to think, ran the inscription on his lordship’s card. This was going too fast for Miss Milborne, who felt that until she herself knew what to think it would be better for his lordship to remain in his present uninformed state.”

— Georgette Heyer

229. “Perhaps, if she could be busy all the time, as she meant to be, she might not feel so unhappy; perhaps, in household cares, she could forget her love, or grow at least accustomed to desolation.”

— Georgette Heyer

230. “Lord Biddenden’s instincts were patriarchal. He liked to see his brothers and sisters under his roof, and to feel that they depended upon him for guidance; and he was almost as anxious for their advancement as his own.”

— Georgette Heyer

231. “And although she did, when shown the impropriety of her behaviour, say she was sorry to have made a scene in public, it was evident that she was not in the least penitent.”

— Georgette Heyer

232. “He’s bookish,’ explained Sir Ralph, torn between pride in his son’s scholastic attainments and the horrid fear that he had fathered a miscreature. ‘Worst seat in the county! But there! No accounting for tastes, eh? Take my daughter, Lizzie! Never opened a book in her life, but rides with a light hand and an easy bit, and handles the reins in form.”

— Georgette Heyer

233. “Does it matter what I know? It is what Cleone knows, but there’s naught under the sun so unreasonable as a maid in love.”

— Georgette Heyer

234. “Oh, yes, well, if he must shoot highwaymen, it’s very well, but to leave the poor man dead on the road – though I make no doubt he would have done the same to Vidal, for I believe they are horridly callous, these fellows – but that’s neither here nor there. Vidal had no right to leave him. Now people will say that he is wickedly blood-thirsty, or something disagreeable, and it is quite true, only one does not want the whole world to say so.”

— Georgette Heyer

235. “Me, I am not a lady,′ announced her grace. ‘I have been very well educated, and I will drink port.”

— Georgette Heyer

236. “He seems an agreeable creature. But that is how it is always! The less eligible a man is the more delightful he is bound to be! You may depend upon it.”

— Georgette Heyer

237. “Nicky beguiled the morning by taking Bouncer to a neighbouring farm, and engaging in a rat-hunt which might have been more successful had not Bouncer jumped to an over-hasty conclusion that his first duty was to rid the world of the flea-ridden terrier who should have assisted him in his work of destroying all the rats in the big barn.”

— Georgette Heyer

238. “Ulysses, stop scratching! Do try to be a little more worthy of me!”

— Georgette Heyer

239. “He did not want middle-aged men with distinguished records with him: they could be better employed elsewhere, and would, moreover, have bored him. He wanted polished young men of good families, who were of his own world, who knew how to make themselves pleasant in exalted circles, and could amuse his leisure moments with their adventures, and their fun, and their bubbling energy.”

— Georgette Heyer

240. “He was clearly a person of affluence, if not of taste.”

— Georgette Heyer

241. “Nothing he wore was designed to attract attention, but he made every other man in the room look either a trifle overdressed or a trifle shabby.”

— Georgette Heyer

242. “Very bad business,’ said Mr Wychbold. ‘Nothing to be done, though.’ ‘That,’ said Sophy severely, ’is what people always say when they are too lazy, or perhaps too timorous, to make a push to be helpful!”

— Georgette Heyer

243. “Wolf was Felicity’s Alsatian. When fetched from the stables he evinced his satisfaction by bounding around his mistress and barking madly for the first hundred yards of their walk. Exercising him was not, as Frank knew from experience, all joy, as he was not in the least amenable to discipline, had to be caught and held at the approach of any motor vehicle, and had a habit of plunging unadvisedly into quarrels with others of the canine race.”

— Georgette Heyer

244. “His household was presided over by his sister, a colourless woman, prone to tears, which perhaps accounted for the fact of his lordship’s being so seldom to be found at home.”

— Georgette Heyer

245. “Few things are more boring than fruitless arguments!”

— Georgette Heyer

246. “I think the hardest thing of all is to be wise in our dealings with the people we love,’ he said. ‘I know I have found it so.”

— Georgette Heyer

247. “Ned! if you don’t tell me, it will be quite shameful of you! You always know everything!’‘Yes, Nicky, but you think I know everything because I never tell you anything I am not quite certain of,’ Carlyon replied, looking back at him with his faint smile. ‘What a sad blow it would be to my vanity if you found I could be just as easily mistaken as anyone else! You must let me keep my own counsel until I am certain.”

— Georgette Heyer

248. “And as for the tulips, I know several, and they would not do for me at all. Besides, they are not romantic, because they have to think so much about their cravats and their coats and the size of their buttons that they have no time for anything besides. The most truly romantic man I know does not give a fig for what he may look like. It would not do for everyone to be so careless, of course, but he is so extremely handsome that it don’t signify a scrap.”

— Georgette Heyer

249. “That Hugh’s presence within walking distance of Biddenden Manor might not be conducive either to his happiness or to his self-esteem he did not allow to weigh with him, for he was a man with a strong sense of propriety, and he knew that it was his duty to feel affection for all his brothers and sisters.”

— Georgette Heyer

250. “I have not always appeared to be sensible of the care you have bestowed on me, but I know now that it has been unceasing.”

— Georgette Heyer