Ada Leverson Quotations

He seemed at ease and to have the look of the last gentleman in Europe.

Fog and hypocrisy - that is to say, shadow, convention, decency - these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.

She suspected him of infidelity, with and without reason, morning, noon and night.

She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.

Many women I know think the ideal of happiness is to be in love with a great man, or to be the wife of a great public success; to share his triumph! They forget you share the man as well!

Most people now seem to treasure anything they value in proportion to the extent that it's followed about and surrounded by the vulgar public.

Most people would far rather be seen through than not be seen at all.

People were not charmed with Eglantine because she herself was charming, but because she was charmed.

A butler in an English household should, however, be English, and as much like an archbishop as possible.

envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition - only to his getting it.

Everything comes to the man who won't wait.

Modesty is a valuable merit ... in people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful to those who have ...

an optimist is the man who looks after your eyes, and the pessimist the person who looks after your feet.

There is, of course, no joy so great as the cessation of pain; in fact all joy, active or passive, is the cessation of some pain, since it must be the satisfaction of a longing, even perhaps an unconscious longing.

Thou canst not serve both cod and salmon.

Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

Feminine intuition, a quality perhaps even rarer in women than in men.

Suspense is torture ... but delightful--or there'd be no gambling in the world.

Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.

It's always something to get one's wish, even if the wish is a failure.

A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.

When a passion is not realized ... it fades away, or becomes ideal worship--Dante--Petrarch--that sort of thing!

As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.

It is all very well to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights. There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time.

The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women.

To a woman--I mean, a nice woman--there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.

Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin, I suggested to Oscar Wilde that he should go a step further than these minor poets; he should publish a book all margin; full of beautiful, unwritten thoughts.

Women are so perverse. Look how they won't wear black when nothing suits them so well!

All really frank people are amusing, and would remain so if they could remember that other people may sometimes want to be frank and amusing too.

The Futurists?.... Well, of course, they are already past.

When I see a cheerful young man shrieking about how full of life he is, banging on a drum, and blowing on a tin trumpet, and speaking of his good spirits, it depresses me, since naturally it gives the contrary impression. It can't be real. It ought to be but it isn't. If the noisy person meant what he said, he wouldn't say it.

You don't really know a woman until she writes you a letter.

You don’t know a woman until you have had a letter from her.

You don't know a woman until you have received a letter from her.

You don't know a woman until you have a letter from her

Before he left, Aunt William pressed a sovereign into his hand guiltily, as if it were conscience money. He, on his side, took it as though it were a doctor's fee, and both ignored the transaction.