Cold Comfort Farm Quotes

One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown.

I saw something nasty in the woodshed.

She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple.

That would be delightful,' agreed Flora, thinking how nasty and boring it would be.

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that.

Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly.

Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful.

Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling. It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit...

Haven't you enough money?' For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five.

Women are all alike-- aye fussin' over their fal-lals and bedazin' a man's eyes, when all they really want is man's blood and his heart out of his body and his soul and his pride....

Well,' said Mrs Smiling, 'it sounds an appalling place, but in a different way from all the others. I mean, it does sound interesting and appalling, while the others just sound appalling.

On the whole, Flora liked it better when they were silent, though it did rather give her the feeling that she was acting in one of the less cheerful German highbrow films.

After another minute Reuben brought forth the following sentence: "I ha' scranleted two hundred furrows come five o'clock down i' the bute." It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply.

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.

The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So is his style

A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious'.

I do not object to the phenomena, but I do object to the parrot.

Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.

There are some things (like first love and one’s first reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely.

He was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery.

Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle.

He stood at the table facing Flora and blowing heavily on his tea and staring at her. Flora did not mind. It was quite interesting: like having tea with a rhinoceros.

...The Abbe's warning: 'Never confront an enemy at the end of a journey, unless it happens to be his journey'.

She glanced upwards for a second at the soft blue vault of the midsummer night sky. Not a cloud misted its solemn depths. Tomorrow would be a beautiful day.

. . . What a pleasant life could be had in this world by a handsome, sensible old lady of good fortune, blessed with a sound constitution and a firm will

By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure.' Judith had sunk into a reverie. 'Curtains?' she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. 'Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude'.

Richard had realized, not that Elfine was beautiful, but that he loved Elfine. (Young men frequently need this fact pointing out to them, as Flora knew by observing the antics of her friends.)

No one had seen anything of Urk since he had gone galloping out into the night carrying Meriam, the hired girl. It was generally assumed that he had drowned her and then himself. Who cared, anyway?

... on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn't think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express opinions about things (like love, and isn't so-and-so peculiar?)

Daisies opened in sly lust to the sun-rays and rain-spears, and eft-flies, locked in a blind embrace, spun radiantly through the glutinous light to their ordained death.

But she had a lively acquaintaince with confinement through the works of women novelists, especially those of the unmarried ones.

Ye know, doan't ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand in takin' a cake out of the oven or wi'a match when ye're lightin' one of they godless cigarettes? Ay. It stings wi' a fearful pain, doan't it? And ye run away to clap a bit o' butter on it to take the pain away. Ah, but' (an impressive pause) 'there'll be no butter in hell!

He was enmeshed in his grief. He did not notice that Graceless's leg had come off and that she was managing as best she could with three.

Mrs Poste, who had wished people to live beautiful lives and yet be ladies and gentlemen.

Is there a rug?' she asked, hanging fire. 'Nay. The sins burnin' in yer marrow will keep yer warm.

The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly.

I ha' scranleted two hundred furrows come five o'clock down i' the bute.' It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. Was it a complaint? If so, one might say, 'My dear, how too sickening for you!' But then, it might be a boast, in which case the correct reply would be, 'Attaboy!' or more simply, 'Come, that's capital.' Weakly she fell back on the comparatively safe remark: 'Did you?' in a bright, interested voice.

Flora had also learned the degraded art of 'tasting' unread books, and now, whenever her skimming eye lit on a phrase about heavy shapes, or sweat, or howls or bedposts, she just put the book back on the shelf, unread.

Cautious as a camera-man engaged in shooting a family of fourteen lions

Coward! Liar! Libertine! Who were you with last night? Moll at the mill or Violet at the vicarage? Or Ivy, perhaps, at the ironmongery?

Mrs Smiling's character was firm and her tastes civilized. Her method of dealing with wayward human nature when it insisted on obtruding its grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not. Christian Science is perhaps a larger organization, but seldom so successful.

Mrs. Smiling's second interest was her collection of brassieres, and her search for the perfect one. She was reputed to have the largest and finest collection of these garments in the world. It was hoped that on her death it would be left to the nation.

For it is a peculiarity of persons who lead rich, emotional lives, and who (as the saying is) live intensely and with a wild poetry, that they read all kind of meanings into comparatively simple actions, especially the actions of other people who do not live intensely and with a wild poetry. Thus you may find them weeping passionately on their bed, and be told that you - you alone - are the cause because you said that awful thing to them at lunch. Or they wonder why you like going to concerts; there must be more to it than meets the eye.

The flies buzzed in answer above the dirty water standing in the washbasin, in which floated a solitary black hair. It, too, was like life-- and as meaningless.

I did all that with my little hatchet.

On the whole, Cold Comfort was not without its promise of mystery and excitement.

the Starkadders rarely did what was obvious though they were only too embarrassingly ready to do what was natural.

Send clean socks. Love to all except Micah.

After another minute Reuben brought forth the following sentence: ‘I ha’ scranleted two hundred furrows come five o’clock down i’ the bute.’ It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. Was

I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?' Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as "Persuasion", but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say "Collecting material." No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be.' Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval. 'If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable around her, and so do I. You see Mary,' - and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about - 'unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes.

The trouble about Mr Mybug was that ordinary subjects, which are not usually associated with sex even by our best minds, did suggest sex to Mr Mybug, and he pointed them out and made comparisons and asked Flora what she thought about it all.

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists call a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

(Seth's) voice had a low, throaty, animal quality, a sneering warmth that wound a velvet ribbon of sexuality over the outward coarseness of the man.

It is rather frightening to be able to write so revoltingly, yet so successfully. All these letters are works of art, except, perhaps, the last. They are positively oily.

Some people believe that an attractive woman cannot stop men falling in love with her; but she can. If she really, in her deepest heart, does not want it, neither will they.

You know how dreadful intelligent people are when you take them to dances.

She is a character in a novel who reads the other characters as characters and rewrites them as people.

Her voice had a breathless, broken quality that suggested the fluty sexless timbre of a choir-boy’s notes (only choir-boys are seldom sexless, as many a harassed vicaress knows to her cost).

His young man's limbs, sleek in their dark male pride, seemed to disdain the covering offered them by the brief shorts and striped jersey. His body might have been naked, like his full, muscled throat, which rose, round and proud as the male organ of a flower, from the neck of his sweater.

For it is a peculiarity of persons who lead rich, emotional lives, and who (as the saying is) live intensely and with a wild poetry, that they read all kinds of meanings into comparatively simple actions, especially the actions of other people, who do not live intensely and with a wild poetry.

But Julia thought it would be a much better idea if they went to see Mr Dan Langham in 'On Your Toes!' at the New Hippodrome, so they went there instead and had a nice time instead of a nasty one.

On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.” ― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

Ye know, doan’t ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand in takin’ a cake out of the oven or wi’ a match when ye’re lightin’ one of they godless cigarettes? Ay. It stings wi’ a fearful pain, doan’t it? And ye run away to clap a bit o’ butter on it to take the pain away. Ah, but’ (an impressive pause) ‘there ’ll be no butter in hell!

The farmhouse itself no longer looked like a beast about to spring. (Not that it ever had, to her, for she was not in the habit of thinking that things looked exactly like other things which were as different from them in appearance as it was possible to be.)

She detested rows and scenes, but enjoyed quietly pitting her cool will against opposition. It amused her; and when she was defeated, she withdrew in good order and lost interest in the campaign. She had little or no sporting spirit. Bloody battles to the death bored her, nor did she like other people to win.

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as  Persuasion, but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, ‘Collecting material’. No one can object to that. Besides, so I shall be.

I found, after spending ten years as a journalist, learning to say exactly what I meant in short sentences, that I must learn, if I was to achieve literature and favourable reviews, to write as though I were not quite sure about what I meant but was jolly well going to say something all the same in sentences as long as possible.

It was the loveliest hour of the English year: seven o'clock on Midsummer Night.

By now Flora was really cross. Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation? Here

Green fingers was the country name for time, patience and love working together.

Marie Laurencin.

...though it was too true that life as she is lived has a way of being curiously different from life as described by novelists.

she came to the conclusion that if Aunt Ada was mad, then she, Flora, was one of the Marx Brothers.

Not to mention Graceless, Pointless, Feckless and Aimless, who are all under-producing and their milk is sour and they won’t go anywhere near the yard.

I saw something nasty in the woodshed.’ Flora

There you are, you see. It’s no use. You’ve chosen to be a married person. You mustn’t expect to lead the life of a bachelor.’ ‘But

In fact, she behaved like most of us do when in love; she never thought of her beloved as a human being at all, but only as an image upon which to drape dreams.

They were what the Americans, bless them! call dumb.

He came over to her with the lounging grace of a panther, and leaned against the mantelpiece.

His thoughts swirled like a beck in spate behind the sodden grey furrows of his face. A woman … Blast! Blast! Come to wrest away from him the land whose love fermented in his veins like slow yeast.

Her blank eyes burrowed through the fetid air between herself and her visitor. They were without content; hollow pools of meaninglessness. They were not eyes, but voids sunk between two jutting pent-houses of bone and two bloodless hummocks of cheek. They suspended two raw rods of grief before their own immobility, like frozen fountains in a bright wintry air; and on these rods the fluttering rags of a futile grief were hung.

One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favourite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown.

Flora pressed Rennett’s hand graciously, and congratulated her upon her striking toilette, which had been borrowed from one of Mr Mybug’s girl friends who drank rather a lot in one way and another and kept a tame boxer in her studio for the sheer love of the thing.

He had told Flora all about his slim, expensive mistress, Lily, who made boring scenes and took up the time and energy which he would much sooner have spent with his wife, but he had to have Lily, because in Beverly Hills, if you did not have a mistress, people thought you were rather queer, and if, on the other hand, you spent all your time with your wife, and were quite firm about it, and said that you liked your wife, and, anyway, why the hell shouldn’t you, the papers came out with repulsive articles headed ‘Hollywood Czar’s Domestic Bliss’, and you had to supply them with pictures of your wife pouring your morning chocolate and watering the ferns. So there was no way out of it, Mr Neck said. Anyway, his wife quite understood, and they played a game called ‘Dodging Lily’, which gave them yet another interest in common.

Her mind must match the properly groomed head in which it was housed. Her movements must be made less frequent, and her conversation less artless. She must write no more poetry nor go for any more long walks unless accompanied by the proper sort of dog to take on long walks. She must learn to be serious about horses. She must learn to laugh when a book or a string quartet was mentioned, and to confess that she was not brainy. She must learn to be long-limbed and clear-eyed and inhibited. The first two qualities she possessed already, and the last she must set to work to acquire at once.

Only a person with a candid mind, who is usually bored by intrigues, can appreciate the full fun of an intrigue when they begin to manage one for the first time. If there are several intrigues and there is a certain danger of their getting mixed up and spoiling each other, the enjoyment is even keener.

No – for themselves. They were all drunkards, but Anne was the worst of the lot. Branwell, who adored her, used to pretend to get drunk at the Black Bull in order to get gin for Anne. The landlord wouldn’t have let him have it if Branwell hadn’t built up – with what devotion, only God knows – that false reputation as a brilliant, reckless, idle drunkard. The landlord was proud to have young Mr Brontë in his tavern; it attracted custom to the place, and Branwell could get gin for Anne on tick – as much as Anne wanted. Secretly, he worked twelve hours a day writing “Shirley”, and “Villette” – and, of course, “Wuthering Heights”. I’ve proved all this by evidence from the three letters to old Mrs Prunty.

Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora’s fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine’s future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials. ‘Oh, yes, we certainly don’t

Flora was pleasantly surprised to hear this, and for a second wondered if the women novelists had been misinformed about confinements? But no: she recollected that they usually left themselves a loophole by occasionally creating a primitive woman, a creature who was as close to the earth as a bloomy greengage and rather like one to look at and talk to, and this greengage creature never had any bother with her confinements, but just took them in her stride, as it were.

Persons of Aunt Ada’s temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces white with fury, and faces brooding in corners, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings, and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they did enjoy themselves!

The buildings of the farm, a shade darker than the sky, could now be distinguished in the gloom, a little distance on, and as Flora and Adam were slowly approaching them, a door suddenly opened and a beam of light shone out. Adam gave a joyful cry. ‘’Tes the cowshed! ’Tes our Feckless openin’ the door fer me!’ And Flora saw that it was indeed; the door of the shed, which was lit by a lantern, was being anxiously pushed open by the nose of a gaunt cow. This was not promising.

I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier." "Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?" She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?" "Well, I'm kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. But ma'am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I've got enough, ma'am, I'm gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I'll never leave the ground again." "There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves." "I see that, ma'am, and I envy you; but I ain't got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I'm just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain't been told nothing about kinda troubling." "lorek Byrnison's quarrel with his king is part of it too," said the witch. "This child is destined to play a part in that." "You speak of destiny," he said, "as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

I needed to talk to Vargina, to straighten this out, but felt suddenly faint, headed for the deli across the street. Just standing in the vicinity of comfort food was comfort. The schizophrenic glee with which you cold load your plastic shell with spinach salad, pork fried rice, turkey with cranberry, chicken with pesto, curried yams, clams casino, breadsticks, and yogurt, pay for it by the pound, this farm feed for human animals in black chinos and pleated chinos, animals whose enclosure included the entire island of Manhattan, this sensation I treasured deeply.

In the evening, she proposed that the three of them should visit the Pit Theatre, in Stench Street, Seven Dials, to see a new play by Brandt Slurb called ‘Manallalive-O!’, a Neo-Expressionist attempt to give dramatic form to the mental reactions of a man employed as a waiter in a restaurant who dreams that he is the double of another man who is employed as a steward on a liner, and who, on awakening and realizing that he is still a waiter employed in a restaurant and not a steward employed on a liner, goes mad and shoots his reflection in a mirror and dies. It had seventeen scenes and only one character

Persons of Aunt Ada's temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces white with fury, and faces brooding in corners, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings, and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they did enjoy themselves! They were the sort that went trampling all over your pet stamp collection, or whatever it was, and then spent the rest of their lives atoning for it. But you would rather have had your stamp collection.

Witches own nothing, so we’re not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don’t feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don’t consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?” “Well, I’m kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I’ll break yer bones, but names ain’t worth a quarrel. But ma’am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I’m a simple aeronaut, and I’d like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I’ve got enough, ma’am, I’m gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I’ll never leave the ground again.” “There’s another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves.” “I see that, ma’am, and I envy you; but I ain’t got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I’m just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain’t been told nothing about kinda troubling.” “Iorek Byrnison’s quarrel with his king is part of it too,” said the witch. “This child is destined to play a part in that.” “You speak of destiny,” he said, “as if it was fixed. And I ain’t sure I like that any more than a war I’m enlisted in without knowing about it. Where’s my free will, if you please?