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.

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,

embalming

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.