It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave. The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
Money’s educational. It’s far more educational than the things it buys.
Indeed, who would have supposed that tolerance, sympathy, and a sense of humour would inhabit that militant form?
Miss Alan was always thus being charitable against her better judgment. A delicate pathos perfumed her disconnected remarks, giving them unexpected beauty, just as in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes rise odours reminiscent of spring. She felt she had made almost too many allowances, and apologized hurriedly for her toleration.
Money: give Mr Bast money, and don’t bother about his ideals. He’ll pick those up for himself.
Lucy does not stand for the medieval lady, who was rather an ideal to which she was bidden to lift her eyes when feeling serious.
To alter poor people until they became exactly like the people who were not so poor.
Oh, what have I done?” “You fainted.” “I – I am very sorry.
The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them.
Alas! that Henry should fade away as reality emerged, and only her love for him should remain clear, stamped with his image like the cameos we rescue out of dreams.
London only stimulates, it cannot sustain.
Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant.
For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.
For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it.
I don’t believe in suiting my conversation to my company.
It is pleasant to analyse feelings while they are still only feelings, and unembodied in the social fabric.
Love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.
You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally, in a few years there would be rich and poor again just the same. The hard-working man would come to the top, the wastrel sink to the bottom.
In other words, they belong to types that could fall in love, but couldn’t live together.
I am a man, and have lived a man’s past.