Quotes & Sayings About Housemaid

That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too. — Charles Dickens

Only to be sent tealess to bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming delicately by backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. — Kenneth Grahame

Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel. — Bertrand Russell

Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it. — Virginia Woolf

What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting? — H.G.Wells

But I didn't want to be anyone's green card ticket, meal ticket, cook, washing lady, housemaid, personal masseuse, baby machine, regularly-scheduled-hole in the mattress. Only to end up dead, discarded, buried in a ditch somewhere, dumped into the big, blue sea, all used up.
Boys should just stay home and fuck their mothers. — Angela S. Choi

I'm getting housemaid's knee kneeling here gulping beauty. — Amelia Earhart

Her voice sounding young and nearly giddy in her ears, she asked, "Are you certain, sir, you ought to kiss a housemaid?" No answering chuckle. "I have never been more certain of anything in my life," he whispered, his breath tickling her upper lip with each syllable. — Julie Klassen

I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got. — Jerome K. Jerome

Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is. — John Ruskin

She had three seconds in which to decide whether to be rich or spend the rest of her life as a housemaid.

She only needed one. — Pierre Lemaitre

I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee. — Jerome K. Jerome

The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak. — Charles Dickens

If a nurse declines to do these kinds of things for her patient, "because it is not her business," I should say that nursing was not her calling. I have seen surgical "sisters," women whose hands were worth to them two or three guineas a-week, down upon their knees scouring a room or hut, because they thought it otherwise not fit for their patients to go into. I am far from wishing nurses to scour. It is a waste of power. But I do say that these women had the true nurse-calling - the good of their sick first, and second only the consideration what it was their "place" to do - and that women who wait for the housemaid to do this, or for the charwoman to do that, when their patients are suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them. — Florence Nightingale

Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy. Happy in these employments, and in occasionally opening an eighteenth-century octavo, to see 'what it is all about,' and to conclude after five minutes that it deserves the seclusion it now enjoys, I had reached the middle of a wet August afternoon at Betton Court ...
-the beginning of the story A Neighbor's Landmark — M.R. James

You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?"
"No, indeed!"
"You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged."
"My dear fellow! I congrat-"
"To Milverton's housemaid."
"My dear Holmes!"
"I wanted information, Watson. — Arthur Conan Doyle

That is a very different sort of housekeeper you have there," Val said, when the library door had closed behind her. "I know." Westhaven made a sandwich and checked again to make sure his brother hadn't pilfered the marzipan. "She's a little cheeky, to be honest, but does her job with particular enthusiasm. She puts me in mind of Her Grace." "How so?" Val asked, making a sandwich, as well. "Has an indomitable quality about her," Westhaven said between bites. "She bashed me with a poker when she thought I was a caller molesting a housemaid. Put out my lights, thank you very much." "Heavens." Val paused in his chewing. "You didn't summon the watch?" "The appearances were deceiving, and she doesn't know I'd never trifle with a housemaid." "And if you were of a mind to before," Val said, eyeing the marzipan, "you'd sure as hell think twice about it now. — Grace Burrowes

You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first sight, and have thought it natural enough. But a housemaid out of a reformatory, with a plain face and a deformed shoulder, falling in love, at first sight, with a gentleman who comes on a visit to her mistress's house, match me that, in the way of an absurdity, out of any story-book in Christendom, if you can! I — Wilkie Collins

But as he reached the bottom of the stairs, a figure appeared in the shadowy passage below and scurried up the stairs past him. He froze. His mind flashed light and dark. His heart rate accelerated. The woman he had just passed - the voice had belonged to the new housemaid. But the face belonged to the woman who haunted his dreams. Margaret Macy. — Julie Klassen

If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia - I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me. — Nellie Melba

Those that spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy. — M.R. James

That there is a silent genocide of women and girls in the homes, communities and just everywhere is not a new story. That my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister, cousin, niece, housemaid, co-worker, friend, neighbor and just about every female shares the same pain is not a new story. What is new in this story is how I stood up to say, "Never again." Never again will a girl or woman get raped, killed, drop out of school, be harmed by our culture or be sexually enslaved. That is as long as I know about it. Never Again--not to any woman or girl again is the new story. — Betty Makoni

Of course, when I was a girl, a housemaid's face would have betrayed no emotion if the corpse were being dismembered on the carpet and she had to step over bits of it to reach the table, but times are changing — Catriona McPherson

All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em - but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life. — Charles Dickens

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid. — Henry James

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pierglass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, the candle is the egoism of any party now absent. — George Eliot

Actual evidence I have none, But my aunt's charwoman's sister's son Heard a policeman, on his beat Say to a housemaid in Downing Street That he had a brother, who had a friend, Who knew when the war was going to end. — Reginald Arkell

Mrs Hendred did not like the people around her to be unhappy. Even the sight of a housemaid crying with the pain of the toothache made her feel low, for misery had no place in her comfortable existence; and when it obtruded itself on her notice it dimmed the warm sunshine in which she basked, and quite ruined her belief in a world where everyone was contented, and affluent, and cheerful. — Georgette Heyer

The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. — G.K. Chesterton

All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light ... — Margot Asquith