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Ada Leverson

  • How gifted he is! He describes people in detail, and by the yard, without giving one the very slightest idea of their appearance. He has a real genius for platitudes.

  • Everything comes to the man who won't wait.

  • All really frank people are amusing, and would remain so if they could remember that other people may sometimes want to be frank and amusing too.

  • Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

  • 'No hurry, no hurry,' said Sir James, with that air of self-denial that conveys the urgent necessity of intense speed.

  • Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day.

  • ... it was his nature to make use of everything. It is an infallible sign of the second-rate in nature and intellect to make use of everything and every one. The genius is incapable of making use of people. It is for the second-rate clever people to make use of him.

  • ... envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition — only to his getting it.

  • Harry smiled rather loudly ...

  • ... his silence made him formidable, especially to most of his wife's friends who, though they could hardly be reproached with want of pluck as a general rule, had one great fear in life — the fear of being bored. It was on this ground that they were all terrified of Romer.

  • ... an optimist is the man who looks after your eyes, and the pessimist the person who looks after your feet.

  • Romer's mother, looking intensely cross — it was her form of deep thought — was re-embroidering ... She had that decadent love of minute finish in the unessential so often seen in persons of a nervous yet persistent temperament.

  • It's always something to get one's wish, even if the wish is a failure.

  • Modesty is a valuable merit ... in people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful to those who have ...

  • ... Harry drowned his sorrows in talk, as other men drown theirs in wine, or in sport, or in taking some violent step. He intoxicated and soothed himself with conversation.

  • You don't know a woman until you have had a letter from her.

  • There is, of course, no joy so great as the cessation of pain; in fact all joy, active or passive, is the cessation of some pain, since it must be the satisfaction of a longing, even perhaps an unconscious longing.

  • Most people would far rather be seen through than not be seen at all.

  • She suspected him of infidelity, with and without reason, morning, noon, and night ...

  • Fog and hypocrisy — that is to say, shadow, convention, decency — these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.

  • But she could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.

  • People were not charmed with Eglantine because she herself was charming, but because she was charmed.

  • Thou canst not serve both cod and salmon.

    • Ada Leverson,
    • in The Times ()
  • A butler in an English household should, however, be English, and as much like an archbishop as possible.

    • Ada Leverson,
    • 1903, in Charles Burkhart, Ada Leverson ()

Ada Leverson, English writer

(1862 - 1933)

Full name: Ada Beddington Leverson.