Jessica Mitford Quotes

You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.

Objectivity? I always have an objective.

I discovered that Human Nature was not, as I had always supposed, a fixed and unalterable entity, that wars are not caused by a natural urge in men to fight, that ownership of land and factories is not necessarily the natural reward of greater wisdom and energy.

It never occurred to me to be happy with my lot.

she was self-educated, like the great majority of women writers once were (including Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf)—haphazardly but effectively.

In writing The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford wasn’t trying to improve our relationship with death, she was trying to improve out relationship with the price point. That is where she went wrong. It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money. The realistic interaction with death and the chance to face our own mortality.

One is only really inwardly comfortable, so to speak, after one's life has assumed some sort of shape. Not just a routine, like studying or a job or being a housewife, but something more complete than all those, which would include goals set by oneself and a circle of life-time type friends. I think this is one of the hardest things to achieve, in fact often just trying doesn't achieve it but rather it seems to develop almost by accident.

From our vantage point in a time when muck is being raked (and flung) vehemently and constantly twenty-four hours a day, the question of effectiveness is overwhelmed by the question of whether any person in America with access to the media remains shockable or persuadable.

Feeling slightly dizzy from going round in circles...

In writing The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford wasn’t trying to improve our relationship with death, she was trying to improve our relationship with the price point. That is where she went wrong. It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money. The realistic interaction with death and the chance to face our own mortality. For all of Mitford’s good intentions, direct cremation has only made the situation worse.

Deep sea fishing off Mexico can’t be beat! When you feel that old tug on your pole and that line goes whistling into the deep, that’s it brother! And, there is nothing quite like the way I feel about Wilbert burial vaults either. The combination of a ” pre-cast asphalt inner liner plus extra-thick, reinforced concrete provides the essential qualities for proper burial. My advice to you is, don’t get into “deep water” with burial vaults made of the new lightweight synthetic substitutes. Just keep “reeling in” extra profits by continuing to recommend WILBERT burial vaults....

Mr. Leon S. Utter, a former dean of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, has written, “Your selling plan should go into operation as soon as the telephone rings and you are requested to serve a bereaved family.… Never preconceive as to what any family will purchase. You cannot possibly measure the intensity of their emotions, undisclosed insurance, or funds that may have been set aside for funeral expenses.

Freude.’ ‘Please,

June in the Cotswolds continued to astonish her with its unfolding beauty. After the exploding colours and scents of May, intoxicating with its blossom and the constant singing of birds, June’s long, still days, with bees diving into the bowed heads of the heavy roses, made her feel as if she could lie down in the grass and disappear like Alice into Wonderland.

They’d looked forward to a post-war life for so long, only to find that nothing could be returned to the way it was before.

The last time Decca had seen David was when she had set off for Paris to elope with Esmond. She might easily have effected a reconciliation. David had written several times to her, brief kind letters on the birth of Benjamin and the death of Nicholas, and she might have gone to see him in Redesdale, but she took umbrage at Sydney’s comment, ‘Since you have imposed conditions it would be better not to see Farve . . .’ When his will was read it was found that she had been cut out in a marked manner: he had never recovered from her attempt to hand over part of Inch Kenneth to ‘the Bolshies’ and was fearful that anything he left her would be given away. In every clause where he left assets to be shared between ‘my surviving children’, he had added the words ‘except Jessica’.

Farve says there’s a shortage of men, anyhow. Perhaps we shan’t ever marry and we’ll be the “surplus women” they’re always worrying about in the newspapers. We shall wear thick worsted stockings and glasses, and grow our own vegetables. We could read books all day long and never dress for dinner, like the O’Malley sisters.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Louisa, smiling. It really didn’t sound so bad.

Jessica was not really cut out for maternity, either physically or temperamentally. In a letter of June 1880, not long after she had given birth to Sydney, she tells Thomas: ‘To leave all and follow you is my desire, no consideration comes really before that. It is you who wish to place children, household, and many things first in my heart and I who have always rebelled against them, and told you that … I married you to be with you.