Elizabeth von Arnim: On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of...

She belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a ressurection of beauty there is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart.

Elizabeth von Arnim

heart winter spring

What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

Elizabeth von Arnim

educational healing book

Well, I for one am unable to imagine how anybody who lives with an intelligent and devoted dog can every be lonely.

Elizabeth von Arnim

intelligent lonely dog

If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.

Elizabeth von Arnim

twenties angel hurt

[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.

Elizabeth von Arnim

taken journey moving

What a blessing it is to love books.

Elizabeth von Arnim

blessing book

The longer I live the greater is my respect for manure in all its forms.

Elizabeth von Arnim

compost greater form

... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.

Elizabeth von Arnim

unselfish going-away littles

I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors . . . and they gave me to understand that if they had had the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago - whereas I don't believe a garden is ever finished. They have all gone now, thank heaven.

Elizabeth von Arnim

garden friendship believe

For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.

Elizabeth von Arnim

loneliness healing fear

Love isn't decent. Love is glorious and shameless.

Elizabeth von Arnim

shameless decent love-is

I would recommend to those persons who are inclined to stagnate, whose blood is beginning to thicken sluggishly in their veins, to try keeping four dogs, two of which are puppies.

Elizabeth von Arnim

dog funny blood

There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.

Elizabeth von Arnim

safety love-you believe

... without it (love), without, anyhow, the capacity for it, people didn't seem to be much good. Dry as old bones, cold as stones, they seemed to become, when love was done; inhuman, indifferent, self-absorbed, numb.

Elizabeth von Arnim

self love people

Keep quiet and say one's prayers-certainly not merely the best, but the only things to do if one would be truly happy; but, ashamed of asking when I have received so much, the only form of prayer I would use would be a form of thanksgiving.

Elizabeth von Arnim

use prayer asking

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable - should persist after the beauty is gone.

Elizabeth von Arnim

vanity gone beauty

She had been dragged in the most humiliating of all dusts, the dust reserved for older women who let themselves be approached, on amorous lines, by boys... It had all been pure vanity, all just a wish, in these waning days of hers, still to feel power, still to have the assurance of her beauty and its effects.

Elizabeth von Arnim

vanity beauty boys

When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.

Elizabeth von Arnim

dream writing book

If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations...don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.

Elizabeth von Arnim

independent shining opportunity

Life is an admirable arrangement, isn't it, little mother. It is so clever of it to have June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work.

Elizabeth von Arnim

mother clever morning

On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of the forest, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me.