Jessica Mitford Quotes

• You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

  Jessica Mitford

  Change, Heartless, World

  53 Copy quote

• O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.

  Jessica Mitford

  Hands, Funeral, Victory

  Jessica Mitford (2011). “The American Way of Death Revisited”, p.14, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.

  Jessica Mitford

  Beautiful, Memories, Order

  Jessica Mitford (2011). “The American Way of Death Revisited”, p.43, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

• Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.

  Jessica Mitford

  Art, People, Brain

  Jessica Mitford (2012). “Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking”, p.6, New York Review of Books

  11 Copy quote

• Gracious dying is a huge, macabre and expensive joke on the American public.

  Jessica Mitford

  Dying, Macabre, Gracious

  29 Copy quote

• I have nothing against undertakers personally. It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister.

  Jessica Mitford

  Sister In Law, Want, My Sister

  8 Copy quote

• the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

  Jessica Mitford

  Writing, Trying, May

  7 Copy quote

• the prison system, inherently unjust and inhumane, is the ultimate expression of injustice and inhumanity in the society at large.

  Jessica Mitford

  Expression, Unjust, Injustice

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Objectivity? I've always had an objective.

  Jessica Mitford

  Objectivity, Objectives

  11 Copy quote

• Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

  Jessica Mitford

  Running, America, People

  Jessica Mitford (1960). “Hons and Rebels”

  9 Copy quote

• The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.

  Jessica Mitford

  Character, Understanding, May

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• One is only really inwardly comfortable, so to speak, after one's life has assumed some sort of shape. Not just a routine, like studying or a job or being a housewife, but something more complete than all those, which would include goals set by oneself and a circle of life-time type friends. I think this is one of the hardest things to achieve, in fact often just trying doesn't achieve it but rather it seems to develop almost by accident.

  Jessica Mitford

  Jobs, Thinking, Circles

  "Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford".

  8 Copy quote

• Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.

  Jessica Mitford

  Ambition, Firsts, Chicago

  JESSICA MITFORD (1963). “THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH”

  9 Copy quote

• Growing up in the English countryside seemed an interminable process. Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged into chilly summer-but nothing ever, ever happened.

  Jessica Mitford

  Summer, Growing Up, Spring

  Jessica Mitford (1960). “Hons and Rebels”, Isis Large Print Books

  8 Copy quote

• Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing.

  Jessica Mitford

  Enemy, Important, Passing

  Jessica Mitford (2012). “Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking”, p.219, New York Review of Books

  9 Copy quote

• [On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

  Jessica Mitford

  Exercise, Simple, Appreciate

  12 Copy quote

• I discovered that Human Nature was not, as I had always supposed, a fixed and unalterable entity, that wars are not caused by a natural urge in men to fight, that ownership of land and factories is not necessarily the natural reward of greater wisdom and energy.

  Jessica Mitford

  War, Fighting, Men

  6 Copy quote

• Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

  Jessica Mitford

  Roles, Prison, Paradox

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Not Avail

  7 Copy quote

• A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.

  Jessica Mitford

  Book, Reading, Years

  Jessica Mitford (1960). “Hons and Rebels”

  8 Copy quote

• Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.

  Jessica Mitford

  Funeral, Industry

  7 Copy quote

• Prison walls are meant not only to keep convicts in, but to keep the would-be investigator out.

  Jessica Mitford

  Wall, Would Be, Prison

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When "Somebody Up There" - a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator - so decrees.

  Jessica Mitford

  Government, Prison, Dictator

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Not Avail

  4 Copy quote

• Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening.

  Jessica Mitford

  Children, Knowing, Interesting

  Jessica Mitford (1960). “Hons and Rebels”, Isis Large Print Books

  4 Copy quote

• Things on the whole are faster in America; people don't stand for election, they run for office. If a person says he's sick, it doesn't mean regurgitating, it means ill. Mad means angry, not insane. Don't ask for the left-luggage; it's called a checkroom.

  Jessica Mitford

  Running, Mean, America

  Jessica Mitford (2016). “Hons and Rebels: Hons & Rebels”, p.141, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

• It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

  Jessica Mitford

  Pain, Reassuring, Childbirth

  4 Copy quote

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