The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Barbara Pym

How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.

Yourself, Try, Younger

Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.

Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured.

ageing, autumn, death, suicide

Oh, this coming back to an empty house,’ Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People – though perhaps it was only women – seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.

The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality.

conversation, mortality

It seemed so much safer and more comfortable to live in the lives of other people – to observe their joys and sorrows with detachment as if one were watching a film or a play.

film, life, play

I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.

unrequited-love

He certainly is very charming, but he makes me feel slightly ill at ease—almost as if I were a woman manquée, if there could be such a thing—you know, something lacking in me.””Oh, well, that’s hardly his fault.””No,” Dulcie agreed. “Mine, of course.

femininity, relationships, self-image, sexism

You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did not appear too much that kind of person to others. Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.

But at least it made one realize that life still held infinite possibilities for change.

hope, last-sentence, last-sentences, possibilities

She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all.

humor, kissing, literature, poets, romance