Louisa May Alcott · 356 pages
Rating: (5.1K votes)
“Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“He was the first, the only love her life, and in a nature like hers such passions take deep root and die-hard.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“...for a girl with eyes like hers has a will and is not ruled by anyone but a lover.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“A time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“Her beauty satisfied [his] artistic eye, her peculiarities piqued his curiosity, her vivacity lightened his ennui, and her character interested him by the unconscious hints it gave of power, pride and passion. So entirely natural and unconventional was she that he soon found himself on a familiar footing, asking all manner of unusual questions, and receiving rather piquant replies.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“My only answer is, if my grave stood open on one side and you upon the other I'd go into my grave before I would take one step to meet you.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“There is very little real liberty in the world; even those who seem freest are often the most tightly bound. Law, custom, public opinion, fear or shame make slaves of us all, as you will find when you try your experiment," said Tempest with a bitter smile.
Law and custom I know nothing of, public opinion I despise, and shame and fear I defy, for everyone has a right to be happy in their own way.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“...and the most intense desire gave force to her passionate words as the girl glanced despairingly about the dreary room like a caged creature on the point of breaking loose.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“Back to him she would never go, but in her lonely life still lived the sweet memory of that happy time when she believed in him and he was all in all to her.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“Better destroy the body than the soul.'" ~Rosamond”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“A fit queen for that nest of roses was the human flower that adorned it, for a year of love and luxury had ripened her youthful beauty into a perfect bloom. Graceful by nature, art had little to do for her, and, with a woman’s aptitude, she had acquired the polish which society alone can give. Frank and artless as ever, yet less free in speech, less demonstrative in act; full of power and passion, yet still half unconscious of her gifts; beautiful with the beauty that wins the heart as well as satisfies the eye, yet unmarred by vanity or affectation. She now showed fair promise of becoming all that a deep and tender heart, an ardent soul and a gracious nature could make her, once life had tamed and taught her more.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“Ah, if I could only feel assured that it was right and not a blind impulse of a weak woman's heart!'" ~Rosamond”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“You love him still and struggle against your love, feeling that it will undo you. He knows this and he will tempt you by every lure he can devise, every deceit he can employ. Sorrow and sin will surely follow if you yield; happiness never can be yours with him; doubt, remorse and self-reproach will kill love, and a time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever. Oh, Agatha, be warned in time, do not listen to your own weak heart but to the conscience that nothing can bribe or silence.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from A Long Fatal Love Chase
“You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements, harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject...
Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory (the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize)... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune: to meet what matches my desire.
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other... In this moment, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition: nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished, for they seem definitively fulfilled... A moment of affirmation; for a certain time, though a finite one, a deranged interval, something has been successful: I have been fulfilled (all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction).”
― Roland Barthes, quote from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
“Elizabeth thought about God, the Lord and Savior she’d spent a lifetime worshiping. Being a believer meant there’d be times like this; wasn’t that what she’d learned over the years? Times when nothing made sense and all she could do was dig her fingernails into her faith and hold on for dear life.”
― Karen Kingsbury, quote from Reunion
“Mrs Loudon was even more successful than her husband thanks to a single work, Practical Instructions in Gardening for Ladies, published in 1841, which proved to be magnificently timely. It was the first book of any type ever to encourage women of elevated classes to get their hands dirty and even to take on a faint glow of perspiration. This was novel almost to the point of eroticism. Gardening for Ladies bravely insisted that women could manage gardening independent of male supervision if they simply observed a few sensible precautions – working steadily but not too vigorously, using only light tools, never standing on damp ground because of the unhealthful emanations that would rise up through their skirts.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from At Home: A Short History of Private Life
“To be fucking human, to not put too fine a point on it, and Daniel Boone can kiss my ass.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Long Earth
“I miei figli non giocano.
Cosa fanno?
Si preparano ad attraversare la vita.
Dico:
Io la vita l'ho attraversata e non ho trovato nulla.”
― Ágota Kristóf, quote from The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels
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