01UndatedTrapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sage, a virtuoso, a good chap, a man of honour, a hard case, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a raisonneur; to be very rich, to be very poor, to possess a thousand mistresses, to win the heart of one love to whom he was ever faithful, to be on the best of terms with all men, to avenge savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognized the following day as the most neglected genius of the age. Each of these ambitions had something to recommend it from one angle or another, with the possible exception of being poor - the only aim Trapnel achieved with unqualified mastery - and even being poor, as Trapnel himself asserted, gave the right to speak categorically when poverty was discussed by people like Evadne Clapham.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
02UndatedThere is always a real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, sometimes the other.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
03UndatedBring a torch, if you've got one. It's as dark as hell and stinks of something far worse than cheese.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
05UndatedIt was [Hugh's] omnipresent fear that some woman might be foisted on him who would turn out to be an adventuress and would blackmail him. This preoccupation made it almost impossible for him to engage a secretary.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
06UndatedHe [Widmerpool] moistened his lips, though scarcely perceptibly. I thought his mixture of secretiveness and curiosity quite intolerable.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
07UndatedWhen people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
08UndatedFor some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coercive. He had small eyes, a large loose mouth, the lips thick, a somewhat receding chin. The eyes were the main feature. They were unusual eyes, not only almost unnaturally small, but vague, moist, dreamy, the eyes of a medium. His cherubic side, increased by a long slightly uptilted nose, was a little too good to be true, with eyes like that. In the manner in which he gave you all his attention there was a taste for mastery.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
09UndatedIn the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
11UndatedOnly an atmosphere of quiet hard work and dull, serious conversation were appropriate to him.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
12UndatedThere is a strong disposition in youth, from which some individuals never escape, to suppose that everyone else is having a more enjoyable time than we are ourselves;Anthony Powell / quote ↗
13UndatedThe potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal endings.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
14UndatedEsteem for the army - never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of the national will - implies a kind of innocence.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
15UndatedLater in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
16UndatedAnyway, what can one do here? I am seriously thinking of running away and joining the Foreign Legion or the North-West Mounted Police—whichever work the shorter hours.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
17UndatedGrowing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
19UndatedOne hears about life all the time from different people with very different narrative gifts.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
20UndatedParents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.Anthony Powell / quote ↗
