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A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6) QUOTES

A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6) QUOTES

1 " Barnby always dismissed the idea of intelligence in a woman as no more than a characteristic to be endured. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

2 " Daydreams of wealth or women must have given Carolo that faraway look which never left him; sad and silent, he contemplated huge bank balances and voluptuous revels. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

3 " Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

4 " Only an atmosphere of quiet hard work and dull, serious conversation were appropriate to him. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

5 " Champagne, m'lord?'
'Have we got any? One bottle would do. Even a half-bottle.'
Smith's face puckered, as if manfully attempting to force his mind to grapple with a mathematical or philosophical problem of extraordinary complexity. His bearing suggested that he had certainly before heard the word 'champagne' used, if only in some distant, outlandish context; that devotion to his master alone gave him some apprehension of what this question—these ravings, almost—might mean. Nothing good could come of it. This was a disastrous way to talk. That was his unspoken message so far as champagne was concerned. After a long pause, he at last shook his head.
'I doubt if there is any champagne left, m'lord. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

6 " Mrs Maclintick's dissatisfaction with life had probably reached so advanced a stage that she was unable to approach any new event amiably, even when proffered temporary alleviation of her own chronic spleen. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

7 " In fact the original memory of Miss Blaides returned to me one morning when I was sitting in my cream distempered, strip-lighted, bare, sanitary, glaring, forlorn little cell at the Studio. In that place it was possible to know deep despondency. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

8 " Maclintick's calculatedly humdrum appearance, although shabby, seemed aimed at concealing bohemian affiliations. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

9 " Well,' said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking kindly, as if to a child who has proposed a game inevitably associated with the breakage of china, 'I know trouble will come of it if we do. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

10 " However much one hears about individuals, the picture formed in the mind rarely approximates to the reality. So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

11 " We took a bus to Victoria, then passed on foot into a vast, desolate region of stucco streets and squares upon which a doom seemed to have fallen. The gloom was cosmic. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

12 " She [Lady Budd] was dressed in a manner to be described as impregnable, like a long, neat, up-to-date battle-cruiser. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

13 " When Quiggin ingratiated himself with people—during his days as secretary to St. John Clarke, for example—he was far too shrewd to confine himself to mere flattery. A modicum of bullying was a pleasure both to himself and his patrons. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

14 " For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

15 " What a shabby lot of highbrows have turned out tonight," he said, when he saw us. "It makes me ashamed to be one. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)

16 " So often one thinks that individuals and situations cannot be so extraordinary as they seem from outside: only to find that the truth is a thousand times odder. "

― Anthony Powell , A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #4-6)