Stella Gibbons Quotes & Sayings

And she said it was a pity, because my father was so "keen", and what did I care about?
So I said, well, I was not quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn't think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express opinions about things (like love, and isn't so-and-so peculiar?). So then she said, oh, well, didn't I think I could try to be a little less slack, because of Father, and I said no, I was I afraid I couldn't; and after that she left me alone. But all the others still said I was no good. — Stella Gibbons

That would be delightful,' agreed Flora, thinking how nasty and boring it would be. — Stella Gibbons

She glanced upwards for a second at the soft blue vault of the midsummer night sky. Not a cloud misted its solemn depths. Tomorrow would be a beautiful day. — Stella Gibbons

Hetty was eating, rather than reading, large slabs of a very thin book of contemporary verse each page having a thick wodge of print, without capital letters, starting at the top and running nearly to the bottom. Her eyes were very close to the book and she frowned with concentration. — Stella Gibbons

Haven't you enough money?'
For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five. — Stella Gibbons

Persons of Aunt Ada's temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces white with fury, and faces brooding in corners, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings, and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they did enjoy themselves! They were the sort that went trampling all over your pet stamp collection, or whatever it was, and then spent the rest of their lives atoning for it. But you would rather have had your stamp collection. — Stella Gibbons

She sat in a corner warm with sunlight, a copy of Home Notes open unread upon her knee, and watched the green meadows flying past while the business men in the carriage talked about news in the papers - awful, as usual - their golf, their gardeners, and the detective stories they were reading. — Stella Gibbons

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit ... — Stella Gibbons

Flora had also learned the degraded art of 'tasting' unread books, and now, whenever her skimming eye lit on a phrase about heavy shapes, or sweat, or howls or bedposts, she just put the book back on the shelf, unread. — Stella Gibbons

Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. — Stella Gibbons

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling.
It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized. — Stella Gibbons

For it is a peculiarity of persons who lead rich, emotional lives, and who (as the saying is) live intensely and with a wild poetry, that they read all kind of meanings into comparatively simple actions, especially the actions of other people who do not live intensely and with a wild poetry. Thus you may find them weeping passionately on their bed, and be told that you - you alone - are the cause because you said that awful thing to them at lunch. Or they wonder why you like going to concerts; there must be more to it than meets the eye. — Stella Gibbons

By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure.'
Judith had sunk into a reverie.
'Curtains?' she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. 'Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude'. — Stella Gibbons

After another minute Reuben brought forth the following sentence:
"I ha' scranleted two hundred furrows come five o'clock down i' the bute."
It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. — Stella Gibbons

Is there a rug?' she asked, hanging fire.
'Nay. The sins burnin' in yer marrow will keep yer warm. — Stella Gibbons

All the same, I don't mean nothin' you wouldn't like yer mas to know about, see? That's straight, that is. It's Art, and that makes all the difference. *When it ain't Art it's dirt, but if it's Art it's all right, see?* — Stella Gibbons

While she lay there with these old worn thoughts coming obediently into her mind, called there by habit and the familiar quiet of early morning, she was aware that at the back of her mind there was another thought that was not at all stale, but so fresh that it was nearly a feeling, with all a feeling's delicious power to kill thought. — Stella Gibbons

Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful. — Stella Gibbons

Tina, finding herself and her husband on a sandbank, so to speak, between two classes, had gone to the artists. The artists do not mind if one is gentry or a common cad so long as one is neither a snob nor a bore — Stella Gibbons

One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown. — Stella Gibbons

A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious'. — Stella Gibbons

On the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn't think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express opinions about things (like love, and isn't so-and-so peculiar?) — Stella Gibbons

Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora's fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine's future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials. 'Oh, yes, we certainly don't — Stella Gibbons

The farmhouse itself no longer looked like a beast about to spring. (Not that it ever had, to her, for she was not in the habit of thinking that things looked exactly like other things which were as different from them in appearance as it was possible to be.) — Stella Gibbons

But Julia thought it would be a much better idea if they went to see Mr Dan Langham in 'On Your Toes!' at the New Hippodrome, so they went there instead and had a nice time instead of a nasty one. — Stella Gibbons

Richard had realized, not that Elfine was beautiful, but that he loved Elfine. (Young men frequently need this fact pointing out to them, as Flora knew by observing the antics of her friends.) — Stella Gibbons

Where are you flying off to?' inquired Viola, rather sulkily; few sights are more annoying when we feel lazy than that of somebody bounding upstairs. — Stella Gibbons

The buildings of the farm, a shade darker than the sky, could now be distinguished in the gloom, a little distance on, and as Flora and Adam were slowly approaching them, a door suddenly opened and a beam of light shone out. Adam gave a joyful cry.
'Tes the cowshed! 'Tes our Feckless openin' the door fer me!' And Flora saw that it was indeed; the door of the shed, which was lit by a lantern, was being anxiously pushed open by the nose of a gaunt cow.
This was not promising. — Stella Gibbons

An interesting survival of mediaeval superstition," commented Flora. — Stella Gibbons

There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Gibbons

The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So is his style — Stella Gibbons

There are some things (like first love and one's first reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely. — Stella Gibbons

But she had a lively acquaintaince with confinement through the works of women novelists, especially those of the unmarried ones. — Stella Gibbons

He was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery. — Stella Gibbons

Twice, in half an hour, Hetty had held up Miss Barlow's plans, and prevented her from moving as quickly as possible on to the next pleasure. Miss Barlow liked her life to be a steady movement towards pleasure. While she was having one, she was thinking about the next and what she should wear while she had that. — Stella Gibbons

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living. — Stella Gibbons

She liked to watch her father as he read, and to listen to the smoothly rolling tones; she felt no curiosity about what the words meant. It was only Shakespeare and she was used to him. — Stella Gibbons

Ah but' 'there'll be no butter in hell! — Stella Gibbons

Mrs. Smiling's second interest was her collection of brassieres, and her search for the perfect one. She was reputed to have the largest and finest collection of these garments in the world. It was hoped that on her death it would be left to the nation. — Stella Gibbons

On the whole, Cold Comfort was not without its promise of mystery and excitement. — Stella Gibbons

Well,' said Mrs Smiling, 'it sounds an appalling place, but in a different way from all the others. I mean, it does sound interesting and appalling, while the others just sound appalling. — Stella Gibbons

I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?'
Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as "Persuasion", but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say "Collecting material." No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be.'
Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.
'If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable around her, and so do I. You see Mary,' - and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about - 'unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes. — Stella Gibbons

He was enmeshed in his grief. He did not notice that Graceless's leg had come off and that she was managing as best she could with three. — Stella Gibbons

Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm. — Stella Gibbons

Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly. — Stella Gibbons

She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple. — Stella Gibbons

On the whole, Flora liked it better when they were silent, though it did rather give her the feeling that she was acting in one of the less cheerful German highbrow films. — Stella Gibbons

Marie Laurencin. — Stella Gibbons

How can you eat that sawdust, Father?' she inquired, beginning on eggs and bacon and speaking cheerfully because it was a fine morning and only ten minutes past nine; and somehow, at the beginning of every new day, there was always a chance that this one might be different from all the rest. Something might happen; and then everything would be jollier all round. — Stella Gibbons

The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly. — Stella Gibbons

Women are all alike
aye fussin' over their fal-lals and bedazin' a man's eyes, when all they really want is man's blood and his heart out of his body and his soul and his pride ... — Stella Gibbons

No one had seen anything of Urk since he had gone galloping out into the night carrying Meriam, the hired girl. It was generally assumed that he had drowned her and then himself. Who cared, anyway? — Stella Gibbons

And when April like an over-lustful lover leaped upon the lush flanks of the Downs there would be yet another child in the wretched hut down on Nettle Flitch Field, where Meriam housed the fruits of her shame. — Stella Gibbons

Mrs Poste, who had wished people to live beautiful lives and yet be ladies and gentlemen. — Stella Gibbons

By god, DH Lawrence was right when he said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage? — Stella Gibbons

This may not be much, but it is something. Tomorrow we die; but at least we danced in silver shoes. — Stella Gibbons

His young man's limbs, sleek in their dark male pride, seemed to disdain the covering offered them by the brief shorts and striped jersey. His body might have been naked, like his full, muscled throat, which rose, round and proud as the male organ of a flower, from the neck of his sweater. — Stella Gibbons

The Abbe's warning: 'Never confront an enemy at the end of a journey, unless it happens to be his journey'. — Stella Gibbons

I saw something nasty in the woodshed. — Stella Gibbons

The trouble about Mr Mybug was that ordinary subjects, which are not usually associated with sex even by our best minds, did suggest sex to Mr Mybug, and he pointed them out and made comparisons and asked Flora what she thought about it all. — Stella Gibbons

Daisies opened in sly lust to the sun-rays and rain-spears, and eft-flies, locked in a blind embrace, spun radiantly through the glutinous light to their ordained death. — Stella Gibbons

Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation? — Stella Gibbons

The flies buzzed in answer above the dirty water standing in the washbasin, in which floated a solitary black hair. It, too, was like life
and as meaningless. — Stella Gibbons

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake. — Stella Gibbons

I do not object to the phenomena, but I do object to the parrot. — Stella Gibbons

To tidy up takes time, and she wants all her time for wolfing books... — Stella Gibbons

Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired. — Stella Gibbons

...though it was too true that life as she is lived has a way of being curiously different from life as described by novelists. — Stella Gibbons

Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy. — Stella Gibbons

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that. — Stella Gibbons

Her blank eyes burrowed through the fetid air between herself and her visitor. They were without content; hollow pools of meaninglessness. They were not eyes, but voids sunk between two jutting pent-houses of bone and two bloodless hummocks of cheek. They suspended two raw rods of grief before their own immobility, like frozen fountains in a bright wintry air; and on these rods the fluttering rags of a futile grief were hung. — Stella Gibbons

Bookshelves stood against the four walls. They were shapely and well made, but were all second-hand; Hetty had picked them up on visits to Chesterbourne. She liked her shelves to have personality, as well as the books on them, and thought it would have been simpler to order shelves to be fitted around the room, or to buy those bookcases that grow with the growth of their library, she had stood firm against the amusement of Victor and the irritation of her aunt, and had the shelves she wanted. — Stella Gibbons

She could feel magic in the quiet spring day, like a sorcerer's far-off voice, and lines of poetry floated over her mind as if they were strands of spider-web. — Stella Gibbons

Ye know, doan't ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand in takin' a cake out of the oven or wi'a match when ye're lightin' one of they godless cigarettes? Ay. It stings wi' a fearful pain, doan't it? And ye run away to clap a bit o' butter on it to take the pain away. Ah, but' (an impressive pause) 'there'll be no butter in hell! — Stella Gibbons

He stood at the table facing Flora and blowing heavily on his tea and staring at her. Flora did not mind. It was quite interesting: like having tea with a rhinoceros. — Stella Gibbons

Dear, Missus, Mister - I beg you never to give thoughts to war, in no way, not to work for it, not by writing nor by reading about it nor by looking at the pictures nor on the television about it. Not in any way ever, at all. Not by being a soldier, sailor, airman, work in factory or above all at atom bombs. Above all at atom bombs. No obligation for this, dear fellow creature. Signed Your Fellow Creature.'
'P.S.,' said Gerald slowly, without turning from the window, 'If we all do this, we shall succeed. — Stella Gibbons

What a pleasant life could be had in this world by a handsome, sensible old lady of good fortune, blessed with a sound constitution and a firm will — Stella Gibbons

It is rather frightening to be able to write so revoltingly, yet so successfully. All these letters are works of art, except, perhaps, the last. They are positively oily. — Stella Gibbons

Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress. — Stella Gibbons

Mrs Smiling's character was firm and her tastes civilized. Her method of dealing with wayward human nature when it insisted on obtruding its grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not. Christian Science is perhaps a larger organization, but seldom so successful. — Stella Gibbons

Cautious as a camera-man engaged in shooting a family of fourteen lions — Stella Gibbons