“Is is difficult to be angry with a gentleman who pays you compliments, even impertinent compliments. Especially impertinent compliments.”

Martyrdom is often the result of excessive gullibility.

Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn’t planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I’m not recommending it as a way to write. It’s very sloppy, but it works for me.

I had refused Emerson’s well-meant offers of assistance, knowing his efforts would be confined to moving the furniture to the wrong places and demanding how much longer the process would take.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family.” “Very boring, Emerson.

He hesitated for a moment. Then he said softly, “I love you, Mother.” He took my hand and kissed it, and folded my fingers round the stem of the rose. He had stripped it of its thorns.

It is easier to counterfeit old age than youth.

..he continues to cling to the forlorn hope that I will turn into one of those swooning females…and fling myself squeeling at him whenever anything happens. Like all men, he clings to his illusions.

Exaggeration is the cheapest form of humor.

A lady cannot be blamed if a master criminal takes a fancy to her.

If all else fails, we will simply have to drug our attendants, overpower the guards, raise the oppressed peasants to arms, and take over the government.

Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point

The approval of a cat cannot but flatter the recipient.

I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle…. Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)

there is nothing like a garden to rest the soul.

It was hate at first sight, clean, pure and strong as grain alcohol.

To argue without knowledge is like trying to weave without thread.

The gentlemen like it when a lady smells sweet.

We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets.

You get thought of in terms of your last job. So if my last job is that of a meat cleaver-wielding character, I will hardly be cast as some benign, older gentleman.

Starch makes the gentleman, etiquette the lady.

Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery .

If gentlemen prefer blondes then I’m a blonde that prefers gentlemen.

The code of the knight is still the code of the gentleman today.