You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.
Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.
But this time I’m not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book.
As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.
Don’t believe those lies about intellectual people. They’re only written to soothe the majority.
There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
The bully and the victim never quite forget their first relations.
But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.
Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.
All a child’s life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes – morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.
A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.
Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.
She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.
This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England’s.
It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice’s spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought “Am I led; am I leading?” Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.
They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.