Best Of Diana Tutton's "Guard Your Daughters"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton.

Painting above: Fantaisie sur Sylvie (c. 1910-1911) by Jacqueline Marval


"We thought it was very nice of Father to give his hardworking daughters a glass of sherry every evening, and we used to look forward to the ceremony. In fact Pandora said that the blackest time of day in her new little suburban house was sherry-time with no sherry. She felt she would never get used to doing without it." 



"I could feel her losing interest in me as she left the room, and I was a little disappointed; but I know Thisbe when she’s on a poem, and I couldn’t be resentful. On the whole she had been sympathetic." 



"“It’s never any good deciding ahead. Rather like saying you’re certain some word you’ve forgotten begins with a B, and then it always turns out to be a T or a Z.”"




Hilarious:

"Then I retired into myself, played the piano mournfully and insistently, and settled down to be a permanent member of the noble army of martyrs." 





"“Castiglione thinks that as our powers fail we begin to think the world has changed, not ourselves."




On floral arranging:

"Cressida agreed, for these delicate arrangements, showing each flower individually against its background, are just as much her strength as massed bowls are mine. I like to mix a lot of improbable colours, and to add a few more flowers when the bowl looks full. I think of this, rather priggishly perhaps, as “orchestration,” and the conjunction of orange and crimson, for instance, jogs my nerves like a good discord."





"I fetched two of Teresa’s scones, a lump of cheese and an apple, and thus supplied withdrew behind a book." 




Also hilarious:

"[...] she gloated like any Borgia over the great blown corpses of poisoned slugs." 




"She looked pleased, as one looks pleased who writes in the last word of a crossword puzzle.


"We had just escaped the sort of tragedy that one could never get over. How lucky we were. We would go on being lucky; we would have a lovely time."

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