You can’t magic yourself out of the situation, you’ve got to live it as decently and as grimly as you can.
Oh what an ill fate it was that has made me love that man.
He dreamt... he was a huge white egg floating in the sea of turquoise blue, and he was everything that there was.
I have always attributed a great importance to eyes. How mysteriously expressive those damp orbs can be; the eyeball does not change and yet it is the window of the soul. And colour in eyes is, in its nature and inherence, quite unlike colour in any other substance. Mr Osmand had grey eyes, but his eyes were hard and speckled like Aberdeen granite, while Tommy’s were clear and empty like light smoke.
I know girls aren’t supposed to tell, but I’ve got to tell – just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later – I wish I’d told him.
How mysterious night and day are, this endless procession off dark and light... I think such sad thoughts – of people in trouble and afraid, all lonely people all prisoners.
But jealousy is a dreadful thing, Jessica. It is the most natural to us of the really wicked passions and it goes deep and envenoms the soul. It must be resisted with every honest cunning and with the deliberate thinking of generous thoughts, however abstract and empty these may seem in comparison with that wicked strength... There is no merit, Jessica, in a faithfulness which is poison to you and captivity to him.
Oh my life is so awful, it’s just so awful to be me, you don’t know what it’s like waking every morning and finding the whole horror of being yourself still there.
Patchway had the enviable countryman’s capacity, which is shared only by great actors, of standing by and saying nothing, and yet existing, large, present, and at ease.
He was glad that he had expressed to her, however blunderingly, what he felt. He was glad that he had held her hand.
But I’ve got a kind of misery that makes me blind and deaf. You wouldn’t understand. You live in the open with all of you spread out around you. I’m mangled in a machine. Even to say it’s my own fault doesn’t mean anything.
But, and especially with Linda’s help, he had decided that, like most other people, he was not made for reality.
Better keep such things decently buried.
Even what we are most certain of we know only in an illusory form.
I need daylight. But I wander in the dark.
Those who occasion loss of dignity are hard to forgive.
Our planet is a freak which we shall destroy by our own wicked senseless activities in the next century. Our history will very soon come to an end. Now that God is dead, we are at last presented with the truth, yes, the truth remains, but it is on a short lead. Anyway, we are nothing and it matters not what we do.
You talk of freedom – I’ve never had it! I’ve been lonely and miserable and in despair, and you want me to consent to all that all over again!
Of course one never knows about other people’s loves, and I would certainly never know about James’s.
He felt misery, loneliness, a terrible need for love.