There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.
BARBARA PYMThere are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.
More Barbara Pym Quotes
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The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one’s home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.
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Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink.
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I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.
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I love Evensong. There’s something sad and essentially English about it.
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Perhaps I need some shattering experience to awaken and inspire me, or at least to give me some emotion to recollect in tranquility. But how to get it? Sit here and wait for it or go out and seek it? . . . I expect it will be sit and wait.
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There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.
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It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one’s mind.
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There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that’s all.
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I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.
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Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.
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I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
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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.
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I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion.
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The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.
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Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.
BARBARA PYM