Mela > Books: greatly-impressing‎ (84)

You already know that. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.

You already know that. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.

the road would take him wherever he wanted to go

the road would take him wherever he wanted to go

People could be good, Furlong reminded himself, as he drove back to town

he felt his self-preservation and courage battling against each other

Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?

but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been – which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life

the small things she had said and done and had refused to do and say and what she must have known, the things which, when added up, amounted to a life

Birds are like eyes when the colors close
so maybe the dead are children who eat the singing.

Birds are like eyes when the colors close
so maybe the dead are children who eat the singing.

Is this still who I am? Just because it’s familiar, does that mean it’s me?

Is this still who I am? Just because it’s familiar, does that mean it’s me?

We were both so unformed. So sure of ourselves and so utterly lost.

You’re just beginning to play around, and he’s nearly ready to give up and settle down and say, This is who I am, I’m done.

I’m a toy version of a man, flopped in my seat, waiting for someone to lift my strings and jerk me into life.

the lost boy wandering the world, weak-willed and daydreaming and achieving nothing

it all adds up to make him seem kind of worldlier. A bit damaged, a bit stronger. More self-possessed

but she’s different now. She’s warmer; less guarded, oddly enough; she knows herself better.

‘Did you tell him you needed him?’
‘I wanted him to just . . . know,’

I keep pressing Esc but I’m still here

Everyone’s got the potential to do the wrong thing – if we were measured that way, we’d all come up short. It’s about what you do

"I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

Ending is better than mending.

character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing,

character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing,

He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable.

the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite

When a conversation has taken a wrong turn for us, we only get farther and farther into the swamp of awkwardness

One must use such brains as are to be found

we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas [[How hopeful!]]

pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others

but pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witt

"I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so. Disagreeable is a word that describes your feelings and not my actions."

it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful

Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes

very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves

But scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill

we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the completeness of the beloved object

It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self

what loneliness is more lonely than distrust

there are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them

Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama

beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors

we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us

And what of those who didn’t know him? What happens, too, when all who knew him are dead, when people know only what they’ve been told? What truth

And what of those who didn’t know him? What happens, too, when all who knew him are dead, when people know only what they’ve been told? What truth will we be talking about, then? Tudor’s truth. Dickon doesn’t deserve that

But surely part of loving a man was accepting him as he was

"Sometimes the best part of loving somebody is loving them even though they've hurt you. Listen to me, Joel. Any fool can love somebody who's perfe

"Sometimes the best part of loving somebody is loving them even though they've hurt you. Listen to me, Joel. Any fool can love somebody who's perfect, somebody who does everything right. But that doesn't stretch your soul. Your soul only gets stretched when you can still love somebody after they've hurt you."

"You've made a mistake, [here I have deleted the name, it would have been a spoiler]. Don't you see? I've turned into your vision of me. And the woman you've created won't put up with you any longer."

A guy needs somebody - to be near him.

A guy needs somebody - to be near him.

"Isn't this worth fighting for?"
Dennis smiled as he answered the question: "It's worth more than that; it's worth—not fighting for!"

"Isn't this worth fighting for?"
Dennis smiled as he answered the question: "It's worth more than that; it's worth—not fighting for!"

We want more light, more breathing-space, more tolerance and understanding: not this narrow-minded wholesale condemnation and covering-up; this instinctive shuddering and turning away from a side of nature that, like every other side, has its right to a hearing, its right to open discussion."

However magnificently England may think to figure in the world's history after the war, the gross stupidity and cruelty of the way she has treated the genuine pacifists should stand as an eternal blot upon her honour."

They don't know the ghastliness of having to pretend to be as normal as they, and all the while to be stifling and suppressing the most vital side of yourself - the love-side.

Being in the minority doesn't imply being in the wrong.

There's such a lot to be done 'some day', isn't there?

"but I maintain that anything that puts itself outside the general rule and diverges too widely from the ordinary type, is an undesirable element, and should be barred out."
"That means that you'd bar out genius too, and lots of other fine qualities that only exist in the brains of people who are exceptions to the rule"

...at sixteen, experience was an unnecessary and usually baffling obstacle to her imagination.

...at sixteen, experience was an unnecessary and usually baffling obstacle to her imagination.

"A holiday wouldn't do any good, or make any difference. I should have to take myself with me."
"And what is so very wrong in that," he tried to sound robust, but the change in her disconcerted him.
"It is myself I need a holiday from," she said.

Until now she had thought of love with bleak distaste. She wanted to dominate the world, not one person.

Perhap that was the worst of all. Not having someone to remember things with.

What we ought to realize about marriage is, first of all, that, like every other human relationship, it is a problem that is never completely solved and settled, once and for all, until both parties are dead and buried. And secondly, that it is an intensely personal affair and that nobody on earth can know as much about it as the two people involved. Consequently, advice and pressure from the outside are always given on the basis of insufficient information, and have at least a fifty-fifty chance of being wrong.

A profound depression came upon her. These were the moments in a mother's life about which nobody ever warned you, about which everybody kept a deceitful silence, the fine books and the speakers who had so much to say about the sacredness of maternity. They never told you that there were moments of arid clear sight when you saw helplessly that your children would never measure up to your standard, never would be really close to you, because they were not your kind of human beings, because they were not your children, but merely other human beings for whom you were responsible. How solitary it made you feel!

Eva had passionate love and devotion to give them, but neither patience nor understanding. There was no sacrifice in the world which she would not joyfully make for her children except to live with them.

Lester said to himself, shivering, "What a ghastly thing to have sensitive, helpless human beings absolutely in the power of other human beings! Absolute, unquestioned power! Nobody can stand that. It's cold poison. How many wardens of prisons are driven sadistically mad with it!"

Anybody who knows anything knows how delicate and exacting a matter it is to try to tune in harmony two human beings, almost constitutionally out of tune even with themselves, full of strange complicated weaknesses and unexpected beauties and strength. Add to that the element of children, each of whom brings a full equipment of strange unexplored possiblities, and any fool can see that no outside complications are needed to make the problem a difficult one.

It wasn't because Eva had not tried her best. She had nearly killed herself trying. But she had been like a gifted mathematician set to paint a picture.

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let us shut up

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

What causes young people to "come out," but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas

Her heart was dead long before her body. She had sold it to become Sir Pitt Crawley's wife. Mothers and daughters are making the same bargain every day in Vanity Fair

But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion?

I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great practitioners in Crawley's way?—how many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums and cheat for a few shillings?

His blushes, his stumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed as he went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate?

One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent

Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

how credulous we are, and how sceptical, how soft and how obstinate, how firm for others and how diffident about ourselves

Did we know what our intimates and dear relations thought of us, we should live in a world that we should be glad to quit, and in a frame of mind and a constant terror, that would be perfectly unbearable

A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least keeps them so

And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses—the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.

Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil."

The truth is, that by economy and good management—by a sparing use of ready money and by paying scarcely anybody—people can manage, for a time at least, to make a great show with very little means

If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay—if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure—why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be against his neighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization would be done away with. We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt.
--> Again, how disturbing.

Among other

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score,

If a body catch a body coming through the rye