A Daughter of Eve quotes

Above sparkled the beveled facets of a Venetian mirror in an ebony frame, crowded with figures in relief, relic of some royal residence. Two flower-stands displayed at this season the sickly triumphs of the hothouse, pale, spirit-like blossoms, the pearls of the world of flowers.

The room might have been for sale, it was so desperately tidy and prim.

It bore no impress of will and character such as marks a happy home, and even the women did not break the general chilly impression, for they were weeping.

Mme. de Granville, who could not deny it, gave to her concession all the merit of wifely submissiveness.

A pious woman never loses an opportunity of taking credit for doing her duty.

The master was a Catholic German, one of those men who are born old and will always remain fifty, even if they live to be eighty. His hollowed, wrinkled, swarthy face had kept something childlike and simple in its darkest folds.

… work, while in addition to the artistic delight in creation he had the satisfaction of contemplating the result and admiring in his wife a woman of polished but unaffected manners and an unforced wit, a maiden and a mother, modestly attractive, unfettered and yet bound.

The history of a happy household is like that of a prosperous state; it can be summed up in half a dozen words, and gives no scope for fine writing.

Moreover, the only explanation of happiness is the fact that it exists, these four years present nothing but the gray wash of an eternal lovemaking, insipid as manna, and as exciting as the romance of Astraea.

Hence their coquetry, their coldness, their tremors, their tempers, and that ingenious battery of unreason, by which they demolish today what yesterday they found entirely satisfactory.

Constancy in a man may pall, in a woman never.

Vandenesse was too thoroughly good-hearted wantonly to plague the woman he loved; the heaven into which he plunged her could not be too ardent or too cloudless. The problem of perpetual felicity is one the solution of which is reserved for another and higher world.

They burned to see Vandenesse in trouble.

“With one’s husband, dear, one simply rubs along; with a lover it’s life,”

said her sister-in-law, the Marquise de Vandenesse.

“With one’s husband, dear, one simply rubs along; with a lover it’s life,” said her sister-in-law, the Marquise de Vandenesse.

“Marriage, my child, is our purgatory, love is paradise,”

said Lady Dudley.

The peccadillo, which would raise hue and cry after a man of high character, counts for nothing in him; while conduct bordering on grossness is barely noticed.

In making his excuses people find their own.

The very man who would fain despise him shakes him by the hand, fearing to need his help. So numerous are his friends that he would prefer enemies.

That is not the behavior of really able men and students; if they are honorable men they stick to their own line, and don’t try to hide their rags under frippery.”

A woman’s thought has marvelous elasticity; it may sink under a blow, to all appearance crushed, but in a given time it is up again, as though nothing had happened.

“Félix must be right,” was the first thought of the Countess.

“Not one patera, no,” said Blondet, “but the whole lot!

Ambition is like death; it clutches all because life, it knows, is hounding it on.

”

In a single hour, then, Marie had brought this clever man to abjure his cynicism in dress. The humblest, as well as the most distinguished, woman must feel her head turned by the first open declaration of her power in such a transformation.

Every change is a confession of servitude.

“They were right, there is a great happiness in being understood,” she said to herself, calling to mind her unworthy instructors.

Thronging desires, mad wishes, passionate thoughts, find their way into a glance and die out there. The pressure of a hand, eluding a thousand Argus eyes, is eloquent as written pages, burning as a kiss.

Love grows by all that it denies itself; it treads on obstacles to reach the higher.

And barriers, more often cursed than cleared, are hacked and cast into the fire to feed its flames.

Blondet was right.

Passion is as cowardly as it is cruel.

The next day, after fluctuating long between “I’ll go” and “I won’t go,” Raoul left his partners in the middle of an important discussion to hasten to the Faubourg St. Honoré and Mme. d’Espard’s house.

Instead of weighing well the indirect and impartial warning he had received from an experienced politician in the expression of his deliberate opinion, Raoul made it an occasion for display, mounted his stilts, and draped himself in the purple of success.

Where is the woman who would not believe her lover rather than her husband?

Mme. de Vandenesse, reassured, plunged once more into that life of repressed irritation, of little stolen pleasures, and of covert hand-pressings which had carried her through the preceding winter;

“What is the matter?” said Marie, flying to him.

Lovers have a way of using this word “nothing” which implies exactly the opposite.

Marie gave a little shrug.

In these words may be read the key to women’s hearts.

They become heroic in the assurance of being all in all to a great and honorable man.

“

Men who have any manners do not question their wives. You profess to be a gentleman.

”

Enough that the world is cruel. It may be that, taken in the mass, it is harsher than are the individuals separately. A thief, sitting in the pit, will applaud the triumph of innocence, and filch its jewels as he goes out.

Society has no balm for the ills it creates; it honors clever roguery, and leaves unrewarded silent devotion.

All this I see and know; but if I cannot reform the world, at least I can protect you from yourself.

Possibly this wretched man was sincere when he wrote to you, sincere in trying to put an end to himself, sincere in returning that very evening to Florine.

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

I am speaking now for you, not for myself. I am tolerant, but society is not; it shuns the woman who makes a scandal; it will allow none to be rich at once in its regard and in the indulgence of passion.

The Countess, as she listened to these generous words, was tossed about by a host of conflicting feelings, but lively admiration for Félix dominated the tempest.

A noble and high-spirited soul quickly responds to gentle handling.

This sensitiveness is the counterpart of physical grace. Marie appreciated a magnanimity which sought in self-depreciation a screen for the blushes of an erring woman.

“

How can a man judge where he loves?

” he replied.

“Speak out, my dear,” said Florine, “and don’t suppose you can keep me long on the tenterhooks. Not a creature in the world can get Raoul from me, I can tell you.

He is bound to me by habit, which is better than love any day.

”

That’s all you know about the affairs of the man whom you profess to love; you leave him penniless, and he kills himself, or rather he doesn’t, he tries to and fails.

Suicide when it doesn’t come off is much on a par with a bloodless duel.

”