Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!
Blogger’s note: Thank you, kind readers, for putting up with my summertime slacking! Now that it’s September, there will be no further excuses — Thursday Quotables is back! After taking a summer break, I’m back on track and will be sticking with my normal weekly posting schedule. Please join me whenever you have a great quotable to share!
My Thursday Quotable for this week:
Venetia by Georgette Heyer
(originally published 1958 )
I am on a roll this year with Georgette Heyer! Venetia is my 4th book by this wonderful author, and it’s just delightful. I’m listening to the audiobook (with excellent narration by Phyllida Nash), and loving every moment. I still have quite a ways to go, but thought I’d share this passage, which is interesting to me because it does not represent the main character’s opinion, but rather shows the viewpoint of an older woman who’s trying to explain men (and their infidelities) to the lovely (and more progressive) Venetia:
“Men, my love, are different from us,” she had said once, “even the best of them! I tell you this because I hold it to be very wrong to rear girls in the belief that the face men show to the females they respect is their only one. I daresay, if we were to see them watching some horrid vulgar prize-fight, or in company with women of a certain class, we shouldn’t recognise our own husbands and brothers. I am sure we should think them disgusting! Which, in some ways, they are, only it would be unjust to blame them for what they can’t help. One ought rather to be thankful that any affairs they may have amongst what they call the muslin company don’t change their true affection in the least. Indeed, I fancy affection plays no part in such adventures. So odd! — for we, you know, could scarcely indulge in them with no more effect on our lives than if we had been choosing a new hat. But so it is with men! Which is why it has been most truly said that while your husband continues to show you tenderness you have no cause for complaint, and would be a zany to fall into despair only because of what to him was a mere peccadillo. ‘Never seek to pry into what does not concern you, but rather look in the opposite direction!’ was what my dear mother told me, and very good advice I have found it.
Yeah, no. But thanks anyway, Lady Denny.
And I do love the use of the word “zany” as a noun — I think I need to start using it in conversation.
What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!
If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:
- Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
- Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
- Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
So what is the quote saying? Just ignore your husband when he’s doing something ignoble?
Basically — ladies should understand that men will do these things, and it’s none of our business, and they’re still good husbands/fathers? *raising a glass in gratitude for NOT living in those times*
Yes, I’m glad that times have changed, because such an idea is very obsolete. In fact, it never should’ve existed. Women should never have had to look away, because men shouldn’t have been behaving in such ways.
I’m so happy that youre back with the Thursday Quotables, I’ve missed it.
This one is quite intersting. I know this was a way of thinking at some times. I’m gratefull too I’m not living in those times…
I’ve been quite faithful to the Thursday Quotables this summer instead (after joining Litsy I’ve been reading a lot more), so there’s a string of new posts on my blog. The most recent is about The Hobbit, which I read one chapter a day with a gourp of fans on Litsy
https://theoldshelter.com/thursday-quotables-hobbit/
Thanks, it’s great to be back! I group read of The Hobbit sounds like it would be a blast. I’ll check out your post!
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