housemaid quotes

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

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

- Dame Nellie real name Helen Mitchell Melba
Said to the conductor Fritz Hart. Quoted in  John Thompson On Lips of Living Men (1962).