Life was like that for most of us, the small unpleasantness rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
One could hardly call them young men. They were middle-aged and looked as if they had always been so.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things…
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
An excellent woman, such as I am often described as, can never really expect to be more than the background against which the portrait is painted.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
I wondered a little sadly why I always seemed to be just a kind person, quite good at arranging flowers and perhaps at cooking, but essentially dull and uninteresting.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
No doubt when one is in love with somebody one doesn’t notice his feet so much.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
A glass of sherry… does not make up for the lack of that sense of being needed which is so important to most of us.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women
Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
Barbara Pym – Excellent Women