Nancy Mitford Quotes

“I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.”

— Nancy Mitford

“If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.”

— Nancy Mitford

“The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married. When it isn't they blame the other person, which is clearly absurd. I believe that is what generally starts the trouble.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.”

— Nancy Mitford

Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives

— Nancy Mitford

“You've no idea how long life goes on and how many, many changes it brings. Young people seem to imagine that it's over in a flash, that they do this thing, or that thing, and then die, but I can assure you they are quite wrong.”

— Nancy Mitford

“The worst of being a Communist is the parties you may go to are - well - awfully funny and touching but not very gay ... I don't see the point of sad parties, do you? And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.”

— Nancy Mitford

“To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Even if I take him out for three hours every day, and go and chat to him for another hour, that leaves twenty hours for him all alone with nothing to do. Oh, why can't dogs read?”

— Nancy Mitford

“Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Linda's presentation of the 'facts' had been so gruesome that the children left Alconleigh howling dismally, their nerves permanently impaired, their future chances of a sane and happy sex life much reduced.”

— Nancy Mitford

Mother, of course, takes a lot of exercise, walks and so on. And every morning she puts on a pair of black silk drawers and a sweater and makes indelicate gestures on the lawn. That's called Building the Body Beautiful. She's mad about it.

— Nancy Mitford

“Do you always laugh when you make love?' said Fabrice.
I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I do. I generally laugh when I'm happy and cry when I'm not. Do you find it odd?”

— Nancy Mitford

“Women are divided into two categories: those who can deal with the men they are in love with, and those who cannot. Sophia was one of those who can.”

— Nancy Mitford

“I am sometimes bored by people, but never by life.”

— Nancy Mitford

“The charm of your writing," Evelyn Waugh once wrote to Mitford, "depends on your refusal to recognize a distinction between girlish chatter and literary language.”

— Nancy Mitford

Indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves.

— Nancy Mitford

“Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of human beings thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral: the art of living.”

— Nancy Mitford

“She ... ran away so often, and with so many different people, that she became known to her family and friends as the Bolter ...”

— Nancy Mitford

One's emotions are intensified in Paris-one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town.

— Nancy Mitford

“There they are, held like flies, in the amber of that moment ...”

— Nancy Mitford

“Oh my past! It's such a long time ago now.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Oh, the spectacles - I have to wear them when I go abroad, I have such kind eyes you see, beggars and things cluster round and annoy me.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Suddenly, just in time, I realised that he was a filthy Hun, so of course I turned my back on him and refused to shake hands. I think he noticed; anyway, I hope so. I hope he felt his position - General Murgatroyd”

— Nancy Mitford

“They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech was worth noting and proclaiming.”

— Nancy Mitford

Just at the moment he's writing a book on famine - goodness! it's sad - and there's a dear little Chinese comrade who comes and tells him what famine is like, you never saw such a fat man in your life.

— Nancy Mitford

“Men, in general, are so treacherous, so envious, and so cruel that it is a comfort to find one who is only weak.”

— Nancy Mitford

Surely a King who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory?

— Nancy Mitford

“The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness.”

— Nancy Mitford

“What is so nice & so unexpected about life is the way it improves as it goes along. I think you should impress this fact on your children because I think young people have an awful feeling that life is slipping past them & they must do something - catch something - they don't quite know what, whereas they've only got to wait & it all comes.”

— Nancy Mitford

“The English lord marries for love, and is rather inclined to love where money is.”

— Nancy Mitford

“If one can't be happy, one must be amused ...”

— Nancy Mitford

It's a funny thing that people are always ready to admit it if they've no talent for drawing or music, whereas everyone imagines that they themselves are capable of true love, which is a talent like any other, only far more rare.

— Nancy Mitford

“Irish gardens beat all for horror. With 19 gardeners, Lord Talbot of Malahide has produced an affair exactly like a suburban golf course.”

— Nancy Mitford

“People in towns are always preoccupied. 'Have I missed the bus? Have I forgotten the potatoes? Can I get across the road?”

— Nancy Mitford

English doctors have killed 3/4 of my friends & the joke is the remaining 1/4 go on recommending them, so odd is human nature.

— Nancy Mitford

Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child. Black Beauty now ... !

— Nancy Mitford

“One thing about tourists is that it is very easy to get away from them. Like ants they follow a trail and a few yards each side of that trail there are none.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Most people like reading about what they already know - there is even a public for yesterday's weather.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Americans relate all effort, all work, and all of life itself to the dollar. Their talk is of nothing but dollars.”

— Nancy Mitford

Sisters are a shield against life's cruel adversity.

— Nancy Mitford

“A typical Irish dinner would be: cream flavored with lobster, cream with bits of veal in it, green peas and cream, cream cheese, cream flavored with strawberries.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Children should be like waffles
you should be able to throw the first one away.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Nothing makes people crosser than being considered too old for love ...”

— Nancy Mitford

“Chickens are cheerless birds, I advise you to keep geese which can be taught to follow like dogs, one needs all the companionship one can get in these days.”

— Nancy Mitford

“The test of a cook is how she boils an egg. My boiled eggs are fantastic, fabulous. Sometimes as hard as a 100 carat diamond, or again soft as a feather bed, or running like a cooling stream, they can also burst like fireworks from their shells and take on the look and rubbery texture of a baby octopus. Never a dull egg, with me.”

— Nancy Mitford

“In France that is the one rule, never make trouble.”

— Nancy Mitford

“Greece is not a country of happy mediums: everything there seems to be either wonderful or horrible ...”

— Nancy Mitford

“Always remember, children, that marriage is a very intimate relationship. It's not just sitting and chatting to a person; there are other things, you know.”

— Nancy Mitford