Commonplace Book

'Waking, John saw Bright drawing the curtains on a garden he had never seen before. Memory made an effort, a conscious tracing of association dragging all the way an anchor of incredulity.

Deep sleep had only come late in the night after dreams so near the surface that he had exercised in them an element of control and tiring responsibility. He disentangled the real from the enormous claims of the unreal, put reason back in its usurped saddle and listened with loathing to the studied quietness of Bright's steps.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 9)

Commonplace Book

'Only twenty-one years - she thought of those who would perhaps some day stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!" - and yet all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth of long-wed, late-dying lovers.'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter XXI)

Commonplace Book

'If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of it first. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up the whole of love and utter it," and then "say adieu for ever," but not before.'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter XVIII)

Commonplace Book

'...They all realise that they are winessing a horrible disaster and they all shiver; but were the fire suddenly to stop they would have a feeling of dissatisfaction. Such a contradictory attitude is natural, and man - a selfish creature - should not be reproached with it. Beauty, however sinister, is beauty none the less, and human sentiment cannot refrain from paying tribute to it.'

from Sinister Night, a piece in The Woman in the Case and other stories by Anton Chekhov

Commonplace Book

'...Doubt is too terrible a toy for true love to play with...'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter XIII)

Commonplace Book

'Prayer was one of his hobby-horses over long glasses of coffee until two.

He would ask his listeners to notice the surge of the old prayers, how they contained the double emphasis of diminution and expansion, humility and eternity for each self, "We thine unworthy servants..." on the one hand, and "for ever and ever, amen," on the other. Didn't we all want to unload the burden of pretence about ourselves, be dust now, but also didn't we also want to feel "for ever and ever," feel we belong more than momentarily to an elusive essence which can never be dust[?]

And on war, in which he had played such a striking role, he would say, "It destroys life prematurely, but it puts in the way of millions a chance to show love as they might never otherwise have done. Those that volunteer to do jobs in which they may die may experience a feeling of sublime generosity which elevates life and differs them from Christ only in degree. Not all who were brave were in search of the bubble reputation. There are other struggles," he said, with his eyes glowing in his pale face, "which are the only important ones. And they are not international - they are internal. And now it is the curse of the atom bomb that it has promoted war to a false position, promoted it to the place of the greatest collective evil imaginable. It is not that. Indeed it may soon prove a device of nature to restore harmony which we have lost because we can analyse more than we can love. You must never, never analyse more than you can love."'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 5)

Commonplace Book

'...the poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their death-song amid the flames.'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter XII)

Commonplace Book

'...In the oxygen of success even the dullest metals will scintillate...'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter X)

Commonplace Book

'Holy to them grew the stillness: the ripple suffused in golden moonlight: the dark edges of the leaves against superlative brightness. Not a chirp was heard, nor anything save the cool and endless carol of the happy waters, whose voices are the spirits of silence. Nature seemed consenting that their hands should be joined, their eyes intermingling. And when Evan, with a lover's craving, wished her lips to say what her eyes said so well, Rose drew his fingers up, and, with an arch smile and a blush, kissed them. The simple act set his heart thumping, and from the look of love, she saw an expression of pain pass through him. Her fealty - her guileless, fearless truth - which the kissing of his hand brought vividly before him, conjured its contrast as well in this that was hidden from her, or but half suspected. Did she know - know and love him still?..'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XXIII)

Commonplace Book

'Over a length of the stream the red round harvest-moon was rising, and the weakened youth was this evening at the mercy of the charm that encircled him. The water curved, dimpled, and flowed flat, and the whole body of it rushed into the spaces of sad splendour. The clustered trees stood like temples of darkness; their shadows lengthened supernaturally; and a pale gloom crept between them on the sward. He had been thinking for some time that Rose would knock at his door, and give him her voice, at least; but she did not come; and when he had gazed out on the stream till his eyes ached, he felt he must go and walk by it. Those little flashes of the hurrying tide spoke to him of a secret rapture and of a joy-seeking impulse; the pouring onward of all the blood of life to one illumined heart, mournful from excess of love.'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XXIII)

Commonplace Book

'Some reversal of blood and annihilation of thought took place as the covered prominence of her breasts pressed on the front of his dinner-jacket. His mouth at this moment[,] had it been a dog's, would have made a mother draw her child away.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 3)

Commonplace Book

'There followed, as he walked away, one of those moments when he came face to face with his life. And he experienced the vacuum which at that time Sart[r]es extolled, with international success, to his juniors, but which Nature allegedly abhors; he experienced nausee and the only joy left seemed to kick it all down - the sweet-tasting "No," of a child asked nicely.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 1)

Commonplace Book

'He had let go eventually with relief. The taste of ashes he discovered had been stronger than he had known. The relationship had become habit; a lie in a very vacant niche.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 1)