Best Mitford Quotes & Sayings

Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.' — Jessica Mitford

It was furnished neither in good taste nor in bad taste, but simply with no attempt at taste at all ... — Nancy Mitford

When the loo paper gets thicker and the writing paper thinner, it's always a bad sign, at home. — Nancy Mitford

Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing. — Jessica Mitford

The charm of your writing," Evelyn Waugh once wrote to Mitford, "depends on your refusal to recognize a distinction between girlish chatter and literary language. — Nancy Mitford

No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks each day. — Mary Russell Mitford

If one can't be happy, one must be amused ... — Nancy Mitford

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth. — Jessica Mitford

English doctors have killed 3/4 of my friends & the joke is the remaining 1/4 go on recommending them, so odd is human nature. — Nancy Mitford

It is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can't bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago. — Nancy Mitford

Time passed, and a morning came when Grace woke up at Yeotown feeling, if not quite happy, at least without a stifling blanket of unhappiness. This blanket had hitherto weighed upon her like something physical, so that there had been days when she had hardly been able to rise from under it and get out of bed. — Nancy Mitford

Indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves. — Nancy Mitford

It was the very worst kind of Banbury-Road house, depressing, with laurels. The front door was opened by a slut. I had never seen a slut before but recognized the genus without difficulty as soon as I set eyes on this one. — Nancy Mitford

We may admire people for being wise, but we like them best when they are foolish. — Mary Russell Mitford

One's emotions are intensified in Paris - one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town. — Nancy Mitford

Greece is not a country of happy mediums: everything there seems to be either wonderful or horrible ... — Nancy Mitford

I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing. — Nancy Mitford

Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly. — Jessica Mitford

If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all. — Nancy Mitford

I discovered that Human Nature was not, as I had always supposed, a fixed and unalterable entity, that wars are not caused by a natural urge in men to fight, that ownership of land and factories is not necessarily the natural reward of greater wisdom and energy. — Jessica Mitford

The kentish week-enders on their way to church were appalled by the sight of four great hounds in full cry after two little girls. My uncle seemed to them like a wicked lord of fiction, and I became more than ever surrounded with an aura of madness, badness, and dangerousness for their children to know. — Nancy Mitford

But I couldn't think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife's shawl? — Nancy Mitford

In France that is the one rule, never make trouble. — Nancy Mitford

In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor. — Jessica Mitford

Oh my past! It's such a long time ago now. — Nancy Mitford

I detest so much ... those persons, who insist upon telling you everything - who labor every point, as the lawyers say, as if they thought all excellence consisted in length ... — Mary Russell Mitford

It's a funny thing that people are always ready to admit it if they've no talent for drawing or music, whereas everyone imagines that they themselves are capable of true love, which is a talent like any other, only far more rare. — Nancy Mitford

I have still the best comforts of life - books and friendships - and I trust never to lose my relish for either. — Mary Russell Mitford

Women are divided into two categories: those who can deal with the men they are in love with, and those who cannot. Sophia was one of those who can. — Nancy Mitford

Mitford would simply like to be the pause that refreshes.' — Jan Karon

Well, great authors are great people - but I believe that they are best seen at a distance. — Mary Russell Mitford

In extreme old age you suddenly find you are unable to run uphill, two buckets full of hen food are heavier than they were and the cheerful scream of hearing aids, provided they are working, is a welcome sound. Other things go wrong. Paddy Leigh Fermor, aged ninety-four came to stay, got into the bath, looked down at the tap end and to his dismay saw that both feet had turned black. 'Oh God,' he thought, 'Teeth, ears and eyes are wonky and now my feet.' He need not have worried. he had got into the bath with his socks on. — Deborah Mitford

People in towns are always preoccupied. 'Have I missed the bus? Have I forgotten the potatoes? Can I get across the road? — Nancy Mitford

Oh dear ... it really is rather disillusioning. When one's friends marry for money they are wretched, when they marry for love it is worse. What is the proper thing to marry for, I should like to know? — Nancy Mitford

Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. — Nancy Mitford

Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture. — Jessica Mitford