He had never been quite certain whether this action indicated courage or infirmity of purpose.
Heaven knows, I’m the easiest woman in the world to get on with, but I will not be bullied by any man. After all, I have my self-respect to think of.
And then he felt the misery of his life. It seemed to his childish mind that this unhappiness must go on for ever.
She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one thing I wanted: to leave me alone.
Laugh while you’ve got the chance, you won’t laugh much when you are dead and buried.
Aloof on her mountain top she considered the innumerable activities of men. She had a wonderful sense of freedom from all earthly ties, and it was such an ecstasy that nothing in comparison with it had any value. She felt like a spirit in heaven.
Though he believed implicitly everything he saw in print, he had learned already that in the Bible things that said one thing quite clearly often mysteriously meant another.
When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.
Her pain was so great that she could have screamed at the top of her voice. She had never known that one could suffer so much; and she asked herself desperately what she had done to deserve it.
I accompanied her down to the first floor and she knocked at a door. She was told to come in, and when she opened it I caught sight of a stout woman with gray hair elaborately marcelled. She was reading a book. Apparently everyone at the Bear and Key was interested in literature.
She was like a silvery flower of the night that only gave its perfume to the moonbeams.
I watched Edward Driffield. He was talking to Lady Hodmarsh. She was apparently telling him how to write a novel and giving him a list of a few that he really ought to read.
It was difficult for her to preserve that haughty, sullen, and coldly indifferent demeanour that appears to be essential to the mannequin as she sails in with deliberate steps, turns round slowly and, with an air of contempt for the universe equalled only by the camel’s, sails out.
The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy. We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing too.
What he taught was very simple. He taught that we are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom.
Did I not tell you that I, too, in my way was an artist? I realised in myself the same desire as animated him. But whereas his medium was paint, mine has been life.
He could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional: but he knew he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindness touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his will.
It made me sad to think how silly, useless, and trivial his life had been. It mattered very little now that he had gone to so many parties and had hobnobbed with all those princes, dukes, and counts. They had forgotten him already.
Mary Ann did not like Miss Wilkinson and called her an old cat.