Commonplace Book

'"It is much more important that Oliver's wife should be a nice, good, well-behaved young woman, than that she should take precedence of Adelaide, Susan," said Miss Philipotte severely. "I am surprised, at your age, to hear you talk such nonsense, and I must add, such vulgar nonsense. Although I am a single woman myself, I do not pretend to be ignorant of the fact that good health is far more essential to the future mother of our race (now so nearly extinct) than a mere title."

Mrs. Morrice did not dare to contradict her sister-in-law, but in her heart she thought the comparison great nonsense. She had enjoyed very poor health all her life, but she was certain that she would have enjoyed a handle to her name better still.'

from Cornelius by Mrs Henry de la Pasture (Chapter XXVII)

Commonplace Book

'"...Be assured therefore that it is not necessary to be a poet or a seer to be perfectly convinced of the reality of what you are pleased to call sublime dreams. To be sure, truth is sublime, and the men who discover it are sublime as well. But they who, having received it and touched it, conform their lives to it as an excellent thing, have not really the right to be proud; for if, when they have once understood it, they reject it, they would be nothing less than idiots or madmen."'

from The Sin of Monsieur Antoine by George Sand (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'"...Does it follow, because a majority of men still know and practise only what is wrong and false, that the clear-sighted man must follow the blind over the precipice?"'

from The Sin of Monsieur Antoine by George Sand (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'"Truth triumphs and pursues its way through whatever disguise one views it and in whatever disguise one clothes it."'

from The Sin of Monsieur Antoine by George Sand (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'"What would you say of a young priest who should deliver sermons at the dinner-table? You would say that he belittled the majesty of his texts. Communistic truth is as deserving of respect as gospel truth, since it is in reality the same truth..."'

from The Sin of Monsieur Antoine by George Sand (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'....Aye! but I say, isn't Dickens the master of all masters & the genius of all geniuses over his people's names? Who could beat him there? Doesn't the sound and smell & taste & look of "Uriah", just merely as a word, make you think of an open pustule on the nose (or cheek perhaps) of a dead undertaker's wife's underclothes-peddler?'

from a letter dated December 5, 1942 in Letters to Louis Wilkinson 1935-1956 by John Cowper Powys

Commonplace Book

"There are symbols on which a man should not dwell: zero is one, infinity another, the negative root a third. A man either knows he is real, or imagines he is imaginary; if he only imagines he is real, or knows he is imaginary, he has no business talking at all."

from Moonlite by David Foster (Act Three, Chapter 13)