Rosamond Quotes & Sayings

How long, I wonder, will ignorance spell purity and knowledge shame? — Rosamond Lehmann

Advice to Young Journal Keepers. Be lenient with yourself. Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions, and temptations. Give yourself all the good and interesting qualities you want and haven't got. If you should die young, what comfort would it be to your relatives to read the truth and have to say: It is not a pearl we have lost, but a swine? — Rosamond Lehmann

But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation. — Rosamond Lehmann

It's the thought that counts. — Rosamond Lehmann

There was sadness in everything - in the room, in the ringing bird-calls from the garden, in the lit, golden lawn beyond the window, with its single miraculous cherry-tree breaking in immaculate blossom and tossing long foamy sprays against the sky. She was sad to the verge of tears, and yet the sorrow was rich - a suffocating joy. — Rosamond Lehmann

When two people unite, kindness must be mutual, or shocking things will happen. — Rosamond Lehmann

Holidays, if you enjoy them, have no history. — Rosamond Lehmann

It is a cliche that human beings are fascinated by size
mountain peaks, high buildings, and whales. We are also amazed by miniatures
a flea on a mouse, a flea on a trapeze, the Last Supper carved on the head of a pin. — Rosamond Purcell

Isn't it amazing how we always have to put our mark on things? And how, from the natural world, we find evidence over and over again that reminds us, not so much of the birds, but of our own stories and our own kinds of art? — Rosamond Purcell

One should always act from one's inner sense of rhythm. — Rosamond Lehmann

The present mood in which they sat relaxed was nothing more than the relief of two people coming back to a bombed building once familiar, shared as a dwelling, and finding all over the smashed foundations a rose-ash haze of willow herb. No more, no less. It is a ruin; but suspense at least, at least the need for sterile resolution, have evaporated with the fact of the return. Terror of nothingness contracts before the contemplation of it. It is not, after all, vacancy, but space; an area razed, roped off by time; by time refertilized, sown with a transfiguration, a ruin-haunting, ghost-spun No Man's crop of grace. — Rosamond Lehmann

Ev'ry Voice and Sing" - words by James Weldon Johnson and music by J. Rosamond Johnson. Copyright by Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Used by permission. — Maya Angelou

You really oughta warn a guy when you're going all glamorous on him, so he'd be prepared. — Rosamond Du Jardin

Another five minutes, thought Olivia, and shut her eyes. Not to fall asleep again; but to go back as it were and do the thing gradually---detach oneself softly, float up serenely from the clinging delectable fringes. Oh, heavenly sleep! Why must one cast it from one, all unprepared, unwilling? Caught out again by Kate in the very act! You're not trying , you could wake up if you wanted to: that was their attitude. And regularly one began the day convicted of inferiority, of a sluggish voluptuous nature, seriously lacking in will-power. — Rosamond Lehmann

In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in. — George Eliot

Rosamond, what are you doing here?"
"You invited me for the weekend, don't you remember?"
"But how could you be so cruelly literal, darling? — Stephen Tennant

Convention is another name for the habits of society. — Rosamond Lehmann

Just as there are rocks which receive the constant shock and spray, the battering of waves, so there are heads about which passions roar. — Rosamond Marshall

It'll all come right. Because, of course, I do believe...I believe - I believe in everything...sun, moon, stars, in seasons - trees, flowers - people, music, life...yes, in life. — Rosamond Lehmann

One can present people with opportunities. One cannot make them equal to them. — Rosamond Lehmann

The fact is, one shouldn't go to parties when one is in love. It makes one act aloof and superior and everyone distrusts you. — Rosamond Lehmann

There's a thread that binds all of us together; pull one end of the thread, the strain is felt all down the line. — Rosamond Marshall

I have decided to keep a record of my inmost real-self thoughts. Perhaps it will help me to find out what I really am like: horrid, I know: selfish, conceited, and material-minded. For instance, lately whenever I've tried to concentrate on anything serious or beautiful, I've started thinking about the Spencers' dance next week. I am ashamed of my pettiness. I'm going to try to do better this year
develop my character more and not always be thinking about enjoying myself. I've always been so happy, I dread disappointment and unhappiness, but they would be good for me. But I don't want them. — Rosamond Lehmann

Yes, we are sure of it. These walls enclose a world. Here is continuity spinning a web from room to room, from year to year. It is safe in this house. — Rosamond Lehmann

(Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.) — George Eliot

Anything that becomes a cult, or a mass movement, loses its moral and spiritual value. The crusade has to be personal, individual. As soon as it becomes collective it loses its purpose. — Rosamond Lehmann

Better destroy the body than the soul.'" ~Rosamond — Louisa May Alcott

A woman in love never takes advice. — Rosamond Marshall

Ah, if I could only feel assured that it was right and not a blind impulse of a weak woman's heart!'" ~Rosamond — Louisa May Alcott

People have been saying the novel is dead for as far back as I can remember. The novel will never die, but it will keep changing and evolving and taking different shapes. Storytelling, which is the basis of the novel, has always existed and always will. — Rosamond Lehmann

The novel will never die, but it will keep changing and evolving and taking different shapes. — Rosamond Lehmann

In a corner of the churchyard grew a plantation of white violets, enormously plump and prosperous-looking ... I saw the dead stretched out under me in the earth, feeding these flowers with a thin milk drawn from their bones. — Rosamond Lehmann

Rosamond being one of those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless. — George Eliot

[On Ian Fleming:] The trouble with Ian is that he gets off with women because he can't get on with them. — Rosamond Lehmann

One must have the humility and the imagination to honor all deep human experiences - not least those one has never come near to sharing. — Rosamond Lehmann

Still, now and then they seemed to be holding behind them the surprising, the magic vistas of childhood - the sudden snow at night, whirling and furring without sound against the window; the full moon and all its shadows on the lawn; the Christmas sleigh and reindeer in the sky. — Rosamond Lehmann

Bernier turned in her chair, smiled, and shook their hands. Dana's heart skipped a beat as she stood inches away from one of New York's most glamorous and adored women. — Lynn Steward

I want to do something absolutely different, or perhaps nothing at all: just stay where I am, in my home, and absorb each hour, each day, and be alone; and read and think; and walk about the garden in the night; and wait, wait... — Rosamond Lehmann