“Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]”
“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”
“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”
“The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One does not live because one's reason assents to living. People who, as we say, 'would be better dead,' don’t want to die! People who apparently have got everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they have not got the energy to fight.”
“I find most of the human race extraordinarily repulsive. They probably reciprocate this feeling.”
“When you're in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I've always thought so.”
“You weren't quite accurate just now."
"I? Not accurate?" Poirot sounded affronted.”
“Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?... Because it is sometimes necessary.”
“A little difficult to know where you were with Elinor. She didn't reveal much of what she thought and felt about things. He liked that about her. He hated people who reeled off their thoughts and feelings to you, who took it for granted that you wanted to know all their mechanism. Reserve was always more interesting.”
“Everything costs so much—clothes and one’s face—and just silly things like cinemas and cocktails—and even gramophone records!’ Roddy”
“.... she was like a flower.
And suddenly, for a vivid minute, Hercule Poirot had a new conception of
the dead girl. In that halting rustic voice the girl Mary lived and bloomed
again. "She was like a flower."
There was suddenly a poignant sense of loss, of something exquisite
destroyed. In his mind phrase after phrase succeeded each other. Peter
Lord's "She was a nice kid." Nurse Hopkins's "She could have gone on the
films any time." Mrs. Bishop's venomous "No patience with her airs and
graces." And now last, putting to shame, laying aside those other views,
the quiet, wondering, "She was like a flower.”
“بغضّ النظر عن الطرف الذى يقف فيه المرء فإن عليه مواجهة الحقائق!”
“المغزى هو أن لدى المرء غريزة للعيش. لا يعيش المرء لأن عقله وافق على الحياة. إن من نقول عنهم:"إن من الأفضل لهم أن يموتوا" لا يريدون الموت،وأولئك الذين يمتلكون-ظاهرياً-كل ما يمكن أن يُعاش لأجله نراهم يتركون أنفسهم يذبلون حتى الموت لأنهم يفتقرون إلى طاقة الكفاح والمقاومة.”
“A volte si apre un abisso fra il passato e il futuro. Quando una persona si è incamminata nella valle all'ombra della morte, e ne torna fuori alla luce del sole...è allora, mon cher, che comincia una nuova vita. Il passato non serve più.”
“Un pò difficile capire come stavano le cose quando c'era di mezzo Elinor. In realtà non rivelava mai molto di ciò che pensava o sentiva. E questo gli piaceva in lei. Perché detestava le persone che vuotavano il sacco, e rivelavano subito le proprie opinioni o manifestavano i propri sentimenti...le persone che davano praticamente per scontato che l'interlocutore desiderasse sapere com'era articolato il loro meccanismo interiore. Il riserbo era sempre stato più interessante.”
“It is a scene of Satyrs and Nymphs, of pursuits and captures, provocative resistances followed by the enthusiastic surrender of lips to bearded lips, of panting bosoms to the impatience of rough hands, the whole accompanied by a babel of shouting, squealing and shrill laughter”
“And I you, my handsome wolf. With everything I am, with everything I’m meant to be, and with eternity to be it in, that’s a lot.”
“Each of us thinks that our own mistake is the worst, because we have made it. We all live with guilt for our actions, Maia. Especially if we have chosen to keep them inside us for as long as you have. I’m sitting here feeling only sadness for you, not disapproval. And I really think that anyone else who heard your story would feel the same. It’s only you who blames yourself.”
“Since future times are facing toward us, the times following them are further in the future, and all future times follow the present. That is why the weeks to follow are the same as the weeks ahead of us.”
“It is central to Christian living that we should celebrate the goodness of creation, ponder its present brokenness, and, insofar as we can, celebrate in advance the healing of the world, the new creation itself. Art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom, can all be explored in new ways.”
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