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spinster QUOTES

spinster QUOTES

1 " Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish? "

― Lisa Kleypas , Married by Morning (The Hathaways, #4)

2 " After all, if spinster chaperons required their own spinster chaperons there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. "

― , The Devil's Waltz

3 " Steerpike of the Many Problems,” said the Doctor. “What did you say they were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It’s as fickle as a fox. Ask me to name the third lateral bloodvessel from the extremity of my index finger that runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk to be found in the knuckles of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year, ha, ha, ha! – or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of frogs two minutes before they die of scabies – these things are no tax upon my memory, ha, ha, ha! But ask me to remember exactly what you said you problems were, a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly. Now why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?”
“Because I never mentioned them,” said Steerpike.
“That accounts for it,” said Prunesquallor. “That, no doubt, accounts for it. "

― Mervyn Peake , Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1)

4 " If a man is unmarried, he is called a bachelor. If a woman is unmarried, she is called a spinster or an old maid. What is it about an unmarried woman that poses such a threat to the patriarchal order? Mainly, it is that women are no one's property when we're unmarried. We're under no one's control, and neither are our children. There is no telling what we might do or say. "

― Marianne Williamson , A Woman's Worth

5 " He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst. "

― Philippa Gregory , The Boleyn Inheritance (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #10)

6 " It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman. "

― Olivia Parker , At the Bride Hunt Ball (Devine & Friends, #1)

7 " Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room. "

― Germaine Greer , The Female Eunuch

8 " People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That’s a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man’s touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don’t understand how you could have self-confidence if you don’t do the work... I have never, ever, ever, met a high confident person and successful person who is not what a movie would call a 'workaholic.' Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it. "

― Mindy Kaling , Why Not Me?

9 " There would be no salvaging this. I was going to die a spinster with cobwebs feasting on my vagina, I just knew it. "

10 " The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to " protect the family name" (as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)-the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at carnegie hall (as if the achievement of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)-the parents who search geneological trees in order to evaluate their prospective son-in-law.-the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history -All these are samples of racism. "

11 " This explains so much," she said, clucking her tongue in mother-hen fashion. " You're compensating for this withered appendage." Withered appendage? What the devil was she talking about? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Colin's dire predictions of shriveled twigs and dried currants rattled in his skull. Wide awake now, he fought to sit up, wrestling the sheets." Listen, you. I don't know what sort of liberties you've taken while I was insensible, or just what your spinster imagination prepared you to see. But I'll have you know, that water was damned cold." She blinked at him. " I'm referring to your leg." " Oh." His leg. That withered appendage "

12 " I particularly want you to meet Miss Bucholtz.”
The very idea made him uneasy. “Why is that,
Ma’am?” he bluntly asked.
Mrs. Morgan hesitated. “Keep this under your hat, mind you.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She let out a tired sigh. “I’ve brought Miss Bucholtz to replace Mr. Gabellini.”
Howie pictured a dried up old spinster with the same commanding presence as Mrs. Morgan, a real battle-axe.
“Fireworks are coming. Are you sure a woman is the right, uh, person for the job?”
“Bertha Bucholz is one of the best cooks I know. I guarantee by this time next month, you men will all be sporting five extra pounds. "

― Debra Holland , Mail-Order Brides of the West: Bertha: A Montana Sky Novella (Montana Sky Series)

13 " The cat required far less attendance than a human child, which is one of the reasons why spinster ladies prefer felines to babies. "

― Elizabeth Peters , The Mummy Case (Amelia Peabody, #3)

14 " If I was an eccentric old spinster in a Merchant Ivory movie, I'd want to share my lovely cottage with Holly and that's the truth. I'd do the cooking and leave the decorating to her, and we'd be inseparable. "

― Lisa Samson , The Sky Beneath My Feet