Housemaids Quotes

• Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.

  Bertrand Russell

  Excitement, Week, Heroines

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.33, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.

  William Morris

  Simple, Simplicity, Foundation

  William Morris, Norman Kelvin (1999). “William Morris on Art and Socialism”, p.77, Courier Corporation

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• I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

  T. S. Eliot

  Soul, Gates, Areas

  'Morning at the Window' (1917)

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• People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

  Henry James

  Nice, People, Leave Me Alone

  1899 Nanda Brookenham. The Awkward Age, bk.6, ch.3.

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• If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia - I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.

  Nellie Melba

  Art, Women, Australia

  Said to the conductor Fritz Hart. Quoted in John Thompson On Lips of LivingMen (1962).

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• Women should have the true nurse calling, the good of the sick first the second only the consideration of what is their 'place' to do - and that women who want for a housemaid to do this or the charwomen to do that, when the patient is suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nursing, Should Have, Nurse

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• At first it was the incomes of corporations, then of rich citizens, then of well-provided widows and opulent workers, and finally the wealth of housemaids and the tips of waitresses. This is all in line with the ability to pay doctrine. The poor, simply because there are more of them, have more ability to pay than the rich.

  Frank Chodorov

  Widows, Lines, Pay

  Frank Chodorov (2007). “Income Tax: Root of All Evil”, p.52, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Twenties, Letters, Knees

  Jerome K. Jerome (2014). “Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog”, p.9, Diderot Publishing

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• All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light.

  Margot Asquith

  Fire, Light, Mind

  Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”

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• Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, People, Laughing

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf - Volume I - The Years, The Waves”, p.26, Read Books Ltd

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• I'm getting housemaid's knee kneeling here gulping beauty.

  Amelia Earhart

  Kneeling, Knees, Aviation

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• Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?

  William Morris

  Wall, Thinking, Two

  William Morris (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of William Morris (Illustrated)”, p.6494, Delphi Classics

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• Actual evidence I have none, But my aunt's charwoman's sister's son Heard a policeman, on his beat Say to a housemaid in Downing Street That he had a brother, who had a friend, Who knew when the war was going to end.

  Reginald Arkell

  Sister, Brother, War

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• I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Boys, Passing Away, Might

  Jerome K. Jerome (2013). “Three Men in a Boat (illustrated) + Three Men on the Bummel + Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow: The best of Jerome K. Jerome”, p.10, e-artnow

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• Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.

  John Ruskin

  Dirty, Drawing, Soldier

  John Ruskin (1869). “Modern Painters: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation: Of invention formal. Of invention spiritual”, p.288

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• All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em - but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Thinking, Safety

  Charles Dickens (1866). “Works of Charles Dickens”, p.67

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• You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?" "No, indeed!" "You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged." "My dear fellow! I congrat-" "To Milverton's housemaid." "My dear Holmes!" "I wanted information, Watson.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Information, Holmes

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, p.93, My Ebook Publishing House

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