“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
“No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”
“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”
“His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss.”
“Do you like him much?'
I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.'
Is he?'
All boys are.”
“But solitude is sadness.'
'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.”
“Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”
“Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.”
“Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none”
“The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.”
“To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.”
“If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.”
“I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
“I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.”
“While I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed!”
“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.”
“If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.”
“The love, born of beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy, consolidated by affection’s pure and durable alloy, submitted by intellect to intellect’s own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in this Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.”
“I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.”
“~Do you like him much?
~I told you I like him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much? He is full of faults.
~Is he?
~All boys are.
~More than girls?
~Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anyboy perfect, and as to likes and diskiles, we should be friendly to all, and worship none.”
“We should acknowledge God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible.”
“Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily
Enjoy them as they fly!”
“I would not be you for a kingdom.'
The remark was too naïve to rouse anger; I merely said -
'Very good.'
'And what would you give to be ME?' she inquired.
'Not a bad sixpence - strange as it may sound', I replied. 'You are but a poor creature.'
'You don't think so in your heart.'
'No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.”
“I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.”
“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”
“I believe in that goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place under the skylights where Lucy might have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over the door of which was written " Lucy's Room." I kept a place for him, too—a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my hand—yet, released from that hold and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host.”
“But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself?”
“For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.”
“Great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers”
“Holding on to my bad feelings about this is doing nothing but harming me, and everyone else, and preventing me from enjoying my life fully. I am an awesome person. I choose to enjoy my life. I choose to let this go.”
“I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony.”
“Yup, I totally jizzed all over her face from eight feet above. The accuracy I had was on point.”
“I've talked to girls who were so blasé about their orgasm. Like it was another thing to do, like I was making it too mythical, too big. Like it wasn't important. Fuck you. This is huge for me. I am God now.”
“Sir, if you are otherwise discreet, you will consider that you have gone far enough. At my brother's request I am treating you no less kindly than Ampflise treated my uncle Gahmuret, without going to bed together. My kindness would in the long run outweigh hers, if anyone were to weigh us properly. And besides, Sir, I don't know who you are, and yet in such a short space of time you want to have my love.”
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