Famous Quotes & Sayings

E.F. Benson Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 44 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by E.F. Benson.

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Famous Quotes By E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 491397

When one is happy there is no time to be fatigued; being happy engrosses the whole attention. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 711465

don't mind good, sweet, gentle things, like - oh, like almost everybody, if only they are sweet and good naturally. But generally they are not. Their sweetness is the result of education or morality, or something tedious, not the result of their natures, of themselves. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 2201965

Emotionally, I have no picture-book illustrated with memories of my first five years, but externally, I have impressions that possess a haunting vividness comparable only to the texture of dreams, when dreams are tumultuously alive. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 391934

To most boys with growing limbs and swelling sinews, physical activity is a natural instinct, and there is no need to drive them into the football field or the fives court: they go there because they like it, and there is no need to make games compulsory for them. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1921894

The body is transmuted into other forms, worms batten on it, it helps to feed the grass, and some animal consumes the grass. But as for the survival of the individual spirit of a man, show me one tittle of scientific evidence to support it. Besides, if it did survive, all the evil and malice in it must surely survive too. Why should the death of the body purge that away? It's a nightmare to contemplate such a thing, and oddly enough, unhinged people like spiritualists want to persuade us for our consolation that the nightmare is true.

("Monkeys") — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1344481

The functions of the human frame are, broadly speaking, known. They are a country, anyhow, that has been charted and mapped out. But outside that lie huge tracts of undiscovered country, which certainly exist, and the real pioneers of knowledge are those who, at the cost of being derided as credulous and superstitious, want to push on into
those misty and probably perilous places. I felt that I could be of more use by setting out without compass or knapsack into the mists than by sitting in a cage like a canary and chirping about what was known. Besides, teaching is very very bad for a man who knows himself only to be a learner: you only need to be a self-conceited ass to teach. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1140366

What man is there, surrounded though he be with the love of wife and children, who does not retain a memory of the romantic affection of boys for each other? Having felt it, he could scarcely have forgotten it, and if he never felt it, he missed one of the most golden of the prizes of youth, unrecapturable in mature life. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1033000

With regard to religion, finally, it may be briefly said that she believed in God in much the same way as she believed in Australia. For she had no doubts whatever as to the existence of either; ad she went to church on Sunday in much the same spirit as she would look at a kangaroo in the zoological gardens; for kangaroos came from Australia. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1875346

Or do you like being frightened?"

Hugh, though generally intelligent, is dense in certain ways; this is one of them.

"Why, of course, I like being frightened," I said. "I want to be made to creep and creep and creep. Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 992818

and it is only in loneliness, as Goethe says, that your perceptions put forth their flowers. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1943070

Taste is one of the five senses, and the man who tells us with priggish pride that he does not care what he eats is merely boasting of his sad deficiency: he might as well be proud of being deaf or blind, or, owing to a perpetual cold in the head, of being devoid of the sense of smell. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 880697

Diva had "popped" into the grocer's. She always popped everywhere just now; she popped across to see a friend, and she popped home again; she popped into church on Sunday, and occasionally popped up to town, and Miss Mapp was beginning to feel that somebody ought to let her know, directly or by insinuation, that she popped too much. So, thinking that an opportunity might present itself now, Miss Mapp read the news-board outside the stationer's till Diva popped out of the grocer's again. The headlines of news, even the largest of them, hardly reached her brain, because it was entirely absorbed in another subject. Of course, the first thing was to find out by what train . . . — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1559786

Young gentlemen with literary aspirations usually start a new university magazine, which for wit and pungency is designed to eclipse all such previous efforts, and I was no exception in the matter of this popular gambit. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1102159

There's many things in this world that will depress you, and make you good for nothing, if you take them seriously, and that cheer you up if you don't. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1104296

rambler roses climbed indifferently about, made friends where they could, and when they found themselves unable, firmly stabbed their enemies and strangled their remains. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1292592

He deceived me by telling the truth. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1353165

Georgie, I've got it," she said. "I've guessed what it means."

Now though Georgie was devoted to his Lucia, he was just as devoted to inductive reasoning, and Daisy Quantock was, with the exception of himself, far the most powerful logician in the place.

"What is it, then?" he asked.

"Stupid of me not to have thought of it at once," said Daisy. "Why, don't you see? Pepino is Auntie's heir, for she was unmarried, and he's the only nephew, and probably he has been left piles and piles. So naturally they say it's a terrible blow. Wouldn't do to be exultant. They must say it's a terrible blow, to show they don't care about the money. The more they're left, the sadder it is. So natural. I blame myself for not having thought of it at once... — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1366179

These invitations were couched in Chesterfield terms: Mr. Wyse said that he had met a mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence, and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you might not give him the joy. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1483340

All the teaching I had ever received had failed to make me apply such intelligence as I was possessed of, directly and vividly: there had never been any sunshine, as regards language, in the earlier grey days of learning, for the sky had always pelted with gerunds and optatives. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 2263515

Hermy, when she was not otter-hunting, could be very sarcastic, and he had a clear month of Hermy in front of him, without any otter-hunting, which, so she had informed him, was not possible in August. This was mysterious to Georgie, because it did not seem likely that all otters died in August, and a fresh brood came in like caterpillars. If Hermy was here in October she would otter-hunt all morning and snore all afternoon, and be in the best of tempers, but the August visit required more careful steering. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1567053

Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1766583

post-prandial hour. But oftener than not when these occasions occurred, — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1974614

No proper person fusses about death; that's a train which we are all sure to catch. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 2123060

Queen Victoria was a woman of peerless common sense; her common sense, which is a rare gift at any time, amounted to genius. She had been brought up by her mother with the utmost simplicity, and she retained it to the end, and conducted her public and private life alike by that infallible guide. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 103253

She's been, but she's coming back," he said. "I expect her every minute. Ah! there she is."

This was rather stupid of Stephen. He ought to have guessed that Lucia's second appearance was officially intended to be her first. He grasped that when she squeezed her way through the crowd and greeted him as if they had not met before that morning.

"And dearest Adele," she said. "What a crush! Tell me quickly, where are the caricatures of Pepino and me? I'm dying to see them; and when I see them no doubt I shall wish I was dead."

The light of Luciaphilism came into Adele's intelligent eyes... — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 517097

The hours of the morning between breakfast and lunch were the time which the inhabitants of Riseholme chiefly devoted to spying on each other. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 118223

He exhibited three portraits, each a masterpiece, which killed every picture within range. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 158164

There is no reason to suppose that taste is in any way a lower sense than the other four; a fine palate is as much a gift as an eye that discerns beauty or an ear that appreciates and enjoys subtle harmonies of sound, and we are quite right to value the pleasures that all our senses give us and educate their perceptions. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 161814

Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 205440

There is a certain amount which I shan't mention publicly," Elizabeth said. "Things about Lucia which I should never dream of stating openly."
"Those are just the ones I should like to hear about most," said Diva. "Just a few little titbits. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 212289

Philosophers have argued about the strongest emotion known to man. Some say 'love', others 'hate', others 'fear'. I am disposed to put 'curiosity' on a level, at least, with these august sensations, just mere simple inquisitiveness. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 299171

It is absurd and ridiculous to want to remain as one was. Indeed, not to change shows that one has a nature incapable of development. It implies a sort of moral torpor, an atrophy of one's nature not to get older as one gets older. And one of the biggest, and perhaps best effects of age is to give one tolerance, to make one realize that it takes all sorts to make a world." He — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 379045

Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 415742

Good morning, dear lady," he said. "By Jove! what a picture of health and freshness you are!"

Miss Mapp cast one glance at her basket to see that the paper quite concealed that article of clothing which the perfidious laundry had found. (Probably the laundry knew where it was all the time, and--in a figurative sense, of course--was "trying it on".) — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 508241

She paused a moment.

"Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?" she said. "If you say 'no,' I shan't. But, please, Pepino--"

Pepino, however, had been instructed to say 'yes,' and accordingly did so. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1026831

Rightly or wrongly, the Victorian considered that there were certain subjects which were not meet for inter-sexual discussion, just as they held that certain processes of the feminine toilet, like the powdering of the nose and the application of lipstick to the mouth, were (if done at all) better done in private. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 602067

Vicinity to the sea is desirable, because it is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else, and because bathing and basking on the shore cannot be considered an employment but only an apotheosis of loafing. ("Expiation") — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 650623

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the room had leaped into light. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 704655

Ah, this delicious night air,' she said, luxuriously sniffing in the coolness. 'Night air and gardening are the great tonics. There is nothing so stimulating as bare contact with rich mother earth. You are never so fresh as when you have been grubbing in the soil - black hands, black nails, and boots covered with mud.' She gave her great jovial laugh.

'I'm a glutton for air and earth,' she said. 'Positively I look forward to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind earth all round me. No leaden caskets for me - I have given explicit directions. But what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one can't have everything.'

("Mrs. Amworth") — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 723188

Early impressions are like glimpses seen through the window by night when lightning is about. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 897928

Romance is a bird that will not sing in every bush, and love-affairs, however devoted the sentiments that inspire them, are often so business-like in the prudence with which they are conducted, that romance is reduced to a mere croaking or a disgusted silence. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 970418

Bits of exultation kept peeping out, and Lucia kept poking them back. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 984441

The greedy man is he who habitually eats too much, knowing that he is injuring his bodily health thereby, and this is a vice to which not the gourmet but the gourmand is a slave. — E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson Quotes 1003047

For it is a most extraordinary, though common, phenomenon to find that perfectly virtuous and upright people often like to be thought just a little wicked, whereas bad people are totally indifferent for the most part as to whether or not anyone thinks them good or not. — E.F. Benson