Sons And Lovers Quotes
"She hurried out of the side garden to the front, where she could stand as if in an immense gulf of white light, the moon streaming high in face of her, the moonlight standing up from the hills in front, and filling the valley where the Bottoms crouched, almost blindingly."
"She became aware of something about her. With an effort she roused herself to see what it was that penetrated her consciousness."
"The tall white lilies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air was charged with their perfume, as with a presence."
"She did not know what she thought. Except for a slight feeling of sickness, and her consciousness in the child, herself melted out like scent into the shiny, pale air."
"The night was very large, and very strange, stretching its hoary distances infinitely."
"His hands relaxed. It dawned on him what he had done."
"She warmed and soothed herself. In her weariness forgetting everything, she moved about at the little tasks that remained to be done."
"Physically even, he shrank, and his fine full presence waned."
"The room was full of the smell of meat and vegetables and pit-clothes."
"In spite of all, and putting aside the fact that he was breadwinner, she never quite wanted him to die."
"Only dare, milord, to lay a finger on that child! You'll regret it forever."
"It seemed queer to the children to see their mother, who was always busy about the house, sitting writing in her rapid fashion, thinking, referring to books, and writing again."
"All the things that men do—the decent things—William did."
"Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved."
"Good bread-and-butter's not for mice, either. Dirty or not dirty, I'd eat it rather than it should be wasted."
"He was in London: he would do well. Almost, he was like her knight who wore her favour in the battle."
"It was said that eggs whisked better in a cold place."
"And there was unheard-of extravagance in the larder."
"But she hoped, by expecting him late, to bring him early."
"Home was home, and they loved it with a passion of love, whatever the suffering had been."
"I should love to think of you cruising there in the Mediterranean almost better than to have you at home."
"His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now."
"She stood in her white apron on the open road, watching him as he crossed the field."
"The boy was tied up inside in a knot of apprehension."
"They arrived home in the mellow evening, happy, and glowing, and tired."
"His heart contracted with pain of love for her."
"He was doing the fourth letter, and feeling quite busy and happy."
"But he wrote slowly, laboriously, and exceedingly badly."
"It is curious that children suffer so much at having to pronounce their own names."
"You know, she's no idea of money, she's so wessel-brained."
"Nothing is as bad as a marriage that's a hopeless failure."
"But remember, there are worse things than breaking off an engagement."
"In three months after I was buried, you'd have somebody else, and I should be forgotten."
"She'd be broken-hearted for two months, and then she'd start to forget me."
"She can't help it. She is like that, and if you choose her—well, you can't grumble."
"It’s because—it’s because there is scarcely any shadow in it; it’s more shimmery, as if I’d painted the shimmering protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer is inside really."
"I want to learn. Why should it be that I know nothing?"
"After all," she said within herself, "if the land were nationalized, Edgar and Paul and I would be just the same."
"To think," she said, "that here I might never have seen them!"
"Everywhere was clean and still for Sunday afternoon."
"He was never ashamed in the least of his home, nor was Miriam of hers, because both were what they should be, and warm."
"Miriam talked books a little. That was her unfailing topic."
"You make me so spiritual!" he lamented. "And I don’t want to be spiritual."
"Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman."
"But the hearth-rug and cushions were cosy; the pictures were prints in good taste; there was a simplicity in everything, and plenty of books."
"The stars on the lake seemed to leap like grasshoppers, silver upon the blackness."
"If you put red berries in your hair," he said, "why would you look like some witch or priestess, and never like a reveller?"
"He had not the faintest knowledge what it really was, but he would never have sunk so low as to confess that to his women-folk."
"I wish you could laugh at me just for one minute—just for one minute. I feel as if it would set something free."
"It was wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit there for an hour and a half, next to Miriam, and near to his mother, uniting his two loves under the spell of the place of worship."
"She did not very long occupy the Morels’ pew. Her father took one for themselves once more."
"At this time he was beginning to question the orthodox creed."
"She exults—she exults as she carries him off from me," Mrs. Morel cried in her heart."
"I don’t know, my boy," she replied piteously."
"One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere, with Miriam sitting beside him."
"If only you could want me, and not want what I can reel off for you!"
"He was not home again until a quarter to eleven."
"The efforts of his father to conciliate him next day were a great humiliation to him."
"He was so wearying. There was something he would not yield. Yet she must be patient with him."
"I can only give friendship—it’s all I’m capable of—it’s a flaw in my make-up."
"Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back."
"His soul wanted her. She guessed somebody had been influencing him."
"There was a vague, unreal feel about her. And nobody else mattered."
"Paul was going to prove that she had been right; he was going to make a man whom nothing should shift off his feet."
"If a man had needed me I’d have married him on his last week’s wages."
"A son's my son till he takes him a wife, but my daughter's my daughter the whole of her life."
"She acted of her own free will. What she would do she did, and made nobody responsible."
"She felt as if she watched the very quivering stuff of life in him."
"It's not religious to be religious," he said.
"And you ought to be happy, you ought to try to be happy, to live to be happy."
"It is comforting," said Mrs. Dawes, "to think the town goes no farther."
"She wants the soul out of my body. I can't help shrinking back from her."
"Marriage was for life, and because they had become close companions, he and she, he did not see that it should inevitably follow they should be man and wife."
"Perhaps the recoil and the shrinking from her was love in its first fierce modesty."
"He owed himself to her; he wanted to belong to her."
"It seemed to him that to sacrifice himself in a marriage he did not want would be degrading."
"He looked round. A good many of the nicest men he knew were like himself, bound in by their own virginity, which they could not break out of."
"They were so sensitive to their women that they would go without them forever rather than do them a hurt, an injustice."
"He went back to her. Something in her, when he looked at her, brought the tears almost to his eyes."
"He had no aversion for her. No, it was the opposite; it was a strong desire battling with a still stronger shyness and virginity."
"We have to fight against that some sort of perversity in our souls that makes us not want, get away from, the very thing we want."
"There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water and the green meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were spangled with gold."
"If I was with her now, we should be jawing about the 'Christian Mystery,' or some such tack."
"Me like to see it! What should I like to see her make a fool of herself for?"
"Love should give a sense of freedom, not of prison."
"Everything rushed along in living beside him; everything was still, perfect in itself, along with him."
"Their loving grew more mechanical, without the marvellous glamour."
"He began to despise her a little, as if she had merited it!"
"She’s got such a will, it seems as if she would never go—never!"
"I shall have to begin a new start of some sort."
"But she does not consent to die; she will not."
"I wonder why nurse didn’t come to settle me down?" complained the mother, like a child, wistfully.
"There," said Paul, stroking her softly. "There!—now you’ll sleep."
"My love—my love—oh, my love!" he whispered again and again.
"Mater, my dear——" he began, with the whole force of his soul.
"And without marriage, we can do nothing?" he asked.
"You've got to carry forward her living, and what she had done, go on with it."
"No," she said, swallowing with difficulty; "I don't suppose it is."