- "maria,' he said, 'i am dying in paradise."
- "i should have quailed in the absence of moonlight, for it was by the leading of stars only i traced the dim path."
- "who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets, and forever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?"
- "i had a sudden feeling as if i, who had never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life."
- "the city seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds."
- "her laughter,' i reflected, 'must be the mere frenzy of despair."
- "not that true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest: but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; 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; and provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter."
- "one moment longer,' whispered solitude and the summer moon, 'stay with us."
- "i did long, achingly, then and for four and twenty hours afterwards, for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me upwards and onwards."
- "my heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords."
- "— dark as doom, pale as malady, and well nigh strong as death."
- "her comrade and victim thinks to be happy one moment — 'not so,' says she; 'i come.' and she freezes the blood in his heart, and beclouds the light in his eye."
- "better, perhaps, to die quickly a pleasant death, than drag on long a charmless life."
- "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 its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of paradise."
- "hate and murder and madness incarnate, she stood."
- "— on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong: and her strength has conquered beauty, has overcome grace, and bound both at her side, captive."
- "fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she rebelled."
- "if life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct single-handed."
jun 21 2020 ∞
jun 21 2020 +