Mary Russell Mitford

Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden!

— Mary Russell Mitford

[On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] Her sweetness of character is even beyond her genius.

— Mary Russell Mitford

To think of playing cricket for hard cash! Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun.

— Mary Russell Mitford

I detest so much ... those persons, who insist upon telling you everything - who labor every point, as the lawyers say,…

— Mary Russell Mitford

No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks each day.

— Mary Russell Mitford

Friendship is the bread of the heart.

— Mary Russell Mitford

I prepare myself for all disappointments by expecting nothing.

— Mary Russell Mitford

Does it not appear to you versatility is the true and rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius-versatility and playfulness? In…

— Mary Russell Mitford

Prejudices of taste, likings and dislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason.

— Mary Russell Mitford

The slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling,…

— Mary Russell Mitford

The power of admiring whatever is deserving of admiration, the nice and quick perception of the beautiful and the true, is one…

— Mary Russell Mitford

A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of waxwork.

— Mary Russell Mitford

In our present high state of civilization, people are so much alike, that anything at all odd comes on one with the…

— Mary Russell Mitford

I have discovered that our great favourite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman...with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that…

— Mary Russell Mitford

I have had a great misfortune; my dear old dog is dead.

— Mary Russell Mitford

Our English people are much addicted to raising idols, and then revenging themselves on their own idolatry by knocking down and demolishing…

— Mary Russell Mitford

I do not think very highly of Madame D'Arblay's books. The style is so strutting. She does so stalk about on Dr.…

— Mary Russell Mitford

Fashion is a capricious deity.

— Mary Russell Mitford

Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.

— Mary Russell Mitford

Buonaparte is certainly writing, or rather dictating, his memoirs. He walks backwards and forwards with his hands behind him, and dictates so…

— Mary Russell Mitford

Enthusiasm is very catching, especially when it is very eloquent.

— Mary Russell Mitford

That bad letters of every kind arise from want of the habit of thinking, I cannot doubt.

— Mary Russell Mitford

I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly…

— Mary Russell Mitford

She was the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly ever.

— Mary Russell Mitford

[On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] ... for finish, and melody of versification, there is nothing approaching to Miss Barrett in this day, or…

— Mary Russell Mitford