It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.
One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.
In what touches their social convictions, most persons do not think. The threat of change, with all it suggests to them in the loss of social and economic privilege, alarms so deeply that they are incapable of unprejudiced thought. They seem to themselves to be thinking, with lucidity and fairness, but since they start from the conviction that change must undoubtedly be for the worse or from settled grief at the thought of losing what is old and lovely, they are doing no more than following a logical sequence of ideas from a false premise.
. . . we do not remember people as they were. What we remember is the effect they had on us then, but we remember it through an emotion charged with all that has since happened to us.
Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.
My mind is not suited to go much into company.
By the way, all joking aside, do I call you Ghastly or Elder Bespoke?' 'You can call me whatever you like. ' Vex nodded. 'Thank you, Gladys.
I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.
I'm living life as best I can - but I'm not exempt from failure and making bad choices.
Ease my suffering. Make me the happiest, most tortured man in the world. Marry me?