Commonplace Book

'When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then - and maybe the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could wait a little while and see. For a little he could live - and listen.'

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

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)