Elizabeth Peters · 337 pages
Rating: (50.4K votes)
“I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)”
“Peculiar or not, it is my idea of pleasure. Why, why else do you lead this life you don't enjoy it? Don't talk of duty to me; you men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging yourselves. You go gallivanting over the earth, climbing mountains, looking for the sources of the Nile; and expect women to sit dully at home embroidering. I embroider very badly. I think I would excavate rather well. ”
“There are too many people in the world as it is, but the supply of ancient manuscripts is severely limited.”
“Men are frail creatures, of course; one does not expect them to exhibit the steadfastness of women.”
“God help the poor mummy who encounters you, Peabody,” he said bitterly. “We ought to supply it with a pistol, to even the odds.”
“...Peabody had better retire to her bed; she is clearly in need of recuperative sleep, she has not made a sarcastic remark for fully ten minutes.”
“love has a most unfortunate effect on the brain,”
“I have been accused of being somewhat abrupt in my actions and decisions, but I never act without thought; it is simply that I think more quickly and more intelligently than most people.”
“my nature does not lend itself to the meekness required of a wife in our society. I could not endure a man who would let himself be ruled by me, and I would not endure a man who tried to rule me.”
“I may say, without undue egotism, that when I make up my mind to do something, it is done quickly.”
“Nothing can be more infuriating than being forgiven over and over again.”
“The current fashions are impractical for an active person. Skirts so tight one must toddle like an infant, bodices boned so firmly it is impossible to draw a deep breath…. And bustles! Of all the idiotic contrivances foisted upon helpless womankind, the bustle is certainly the worst.”
“I hope I number patience among my virtues, but shilly-shallying, when nothing is to be gained by delay, is not a virtue.”
“why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself!”
“I believe you would square off at Satan if he came around and inconvenienced you!”
“he managed to create an atmosphere of sticky sentimentality that disgusted me.”
“There is nothing more abominable than being in a state of bodily exhaustion and mental irritation; I was too lethargic to get up and seek some means of occupying my mind, but I was too uneasy to fall asleep.”
“A woman’s instinct, I always feel, supercedes logic.”
“at the time there were moments of extreme discomfort; but the adventure, the danger, the exhilaration of doubt and peril are in retrospect something I rather regret having lost.”
“People of that sort seldom fall ill; they are too busy pretending to be ill.”
“She was so pitiful as she lay there on the cold, damp ground that only a heart of stone could have been unmoved. There are many hearts of that composition, however.”
“that was Evelyn’s weakness. She was too kind, and too truthful. Both, I have found, are inconvenient character traits.”
“Before us, the moonlight lay upon the tumbled desolation of sand that had once been the brilliant capital of a pharaoh. For a moment I had a vision; I seemed to see the ruined walls rise up again, the stately villas in their green groves and gardens, the white walls of the temples, adorned with brilliantly painted reliefs, the flash of gold-tipped flagstaffs, with crimson pennants flying the breeze. The wide, tree-lined avenues were filled with a laughing throng of white-clad worshipers, going to the temple, and before them all raced the golden chariot of the king, drawn by matched pair of snow-white horses…. Gone. All gone, into the dust to which we must all descend when our hour comes. “Well?”
“semaphored warning as well as I could. He took the hint.”
“As for my clothes, they suit the life I lead. The current fashions are impractical for an active person. Skirts so tight one must toddle like an infant, bodices boned so firmly it is impossible to draw a deep breath…And bustles! Of all the idiotic contrivances foisted upon helpless womankind, the bustle is certainly the worst. I wear them, since it is impossible to have a gown made without them, but at least I can insist on sensible dark fabrics and a minimum of ornament. What a fool I should look in puffs and frills and crimson satin—or a gown trimmed with dead birds, like one I saw!”
“I don't know why I should have been so pleased to see Lucas behaving like a gentleman for a change. I never liked the man... But of course I know why. I would have defended Satan himself if he had been in disfavor with Emerson.”
“I am not at all alarmed,” I said calmly. “Except for your friend’s health. He seems about to have a fit. Is he commonly subject to weakness of the brain?” The”
“No, no, you needn’t slap me; I am not at all hysterical.”
“So I went upstairs, to console the other half of the pair of heartbroken lovers, and a tedious business it was too, when a little common sense on both parts would have settled the matter to the satisfaction of all. With”
“Life is not so simple. There are many futures. The life of a single person is like a great tree: every branch, every twig, every leaf is a possible future.”
“It's more than you think it can be," she heard herself say. "It changes everything, and fixes everything that matters. Maybe you're never going to be the same, and maybe part of you is always afraid of what will happen if...but he's always going to be there. All you have to do is reach out, and he's going to be there.”
“The capacity for deluding ourselves that today's reality is the only true one, on the one hand, sustains us, but on the other, it plunges us into an endless void, because today's reality is destined to prove delusion for us tomorrow; and life doesn't conclude. It can't conclude. Tomorrow if it concludes, it's finished.”
“Not everything worth keeping needs to be useful”
“There were shadows in the corners and whispers on the stairs and time was as irrelevant as honesty.”
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