Mary, Mary quotes

Mary Makebelieve lived with her mother in a small room at the very top of a big, dingy house in a Dublin back street. As long as she could remember she had lived in that top back room.

She knew every crack in the ceiling, and they were numerous and of strange shapes.

Every spot of mildew on the ancient wallpaper was familiar.

Her mother seldom washed at all.

She held that washing was very unhealthy and took the natural gloss off the face, and that, moreover, soap either tightened the skin or made it wrinkle.

Her own face was very tight in some places and very loose in others, and Mary Makebelieve often thought that the tight places were spots which her mother used to wash when she was young, and the loose parts were those which had never been …

The mother duck swam placidly close to her brood, and clucked in a low voice all kinds of warnings and advice and reproof to the little ones. Mary Makebelieve thought it was very clever of the little ducklings to be able to swim so well.

She loved them, and when nobody was looking she used to cluck at them like their mother; but she did not often do this, because she did not know duck language really well, and feared that her cluck might mean the wrong things, and that she might be giving these innocents bad advice, and telling them to do something contrary to what their mother had just directed.

The bridge across the big lake was a fascinating place. On the sunny side lots of ducks were always standing on their heads searching for something in the water, so that they looked like only half ducks.

… of it did not drift away, although the very house wherein she lived was infested by these conjoints, and the streets wherein she walked were crowded with undistinguished couples … Those grey-lived, dreary-natured people had a spark of fire smouldering somewhere in their poor economy.

Six feet deep is scarcely deep enough to bury romance, and until that depth of clay has clogged our bones the fire can still smoulder and be fanned, and, perhaps, blaze up and flare across a county or a country to warm the cold hands of many a shrivelled person.

How did all these people come together? She did not yet understand the basic necessity that drives the male to the female. Sex was not yet to her a physiological distinction, it was only a differentiation of clothing, a matter of whiskers and no whiskers:

She fancied she would not mind being hit by a man, and then, watching the vigour of their movements, she thought they could hit very hard, but still there was a terrible attraction about the idea of being hit by a man.

She asked her mother (with apparent irrelevance), had a man ever struck her?

Her mother was silent for a few moments, and then burst into so violent a passion of weeping that Mary Makebelieve was frightened. She rushed into her mother’s arms, and was rocked fiercely against a heart almost bursting with bitter pride and recollection.

but she had begun to take a new and peculiar interest in men. One of these hurrying or loitering strangers might be the husband whom fate had ordained for her.

She would scarcely have been surprised if one of the men who looked at her casually in the street had suddenly halted and asked her to marry him.

It came on her with something like assurance that that was the only business these men were there for;

No ditch was too low to rummage in, no rathole too hidden to be ravaged; a gate represented something to be climbed over; an open door was an invitation, a locked one a challenge.

They could dodge under the fences of the law and climb the barbed wire of morality with equal impunity, and the utmost rigour of punishment had little terror for those whose hardships could scarcely be artificially worsened.

The stagger of despair, the stricken, helpless aspect of such people, their gaunt faces and blurred eyes, might conceivably be their stock-in-trade, the keys wherewith they unlocked hearts and purses and area doors.

It must be so when the sun was shining and birds were singing across fields not immeasurably distant, and children in walled gardens romped among fruits and flowers.

She would believe this, for it was the early morning when one must believe, but when the night time came again she would laugh to scorn such easy beliefs, she would see the lean ribs of humanity when she undressed herself.

The horses under the heavy drays pulled their loads as if they were not heavy. The big, red-faced drivers leaned back at ease, with their hard hats pushed back from their foreheads and their eyes puckered at the sunshine.

The tramcars whizzed by like great jewels.

The outside cars went spanking down the broad road, and every jolly-faced jarvey winked at her as he jolted by. The people going up and down the street seemed contented and happy.

After a while Mary Makebelieve arose and was about bidding him a timid goodbye.

She wished to go away to her own little room where she could look at herself and ask herself questions.

She wanted to visualise herself sitting under a tree beside a man. She knew that she could reconstruct him to the smallest detail, but feared that she might not be able to reconstruct herself.

He told her many things about himself and about his comrades—those equally huge men. She could see them walking with slow vigour through their barrack-yard, falling in for exercise or gymnastics or for school.

She wondered what they were taught, and who had sufficient impertinence to teach giants, and were they ever slapped for not knowing their lessons?

He told her of his daily work, the hours when he was on and off duty, the hours when he rose in the morning and when he went to bed.

As her mother was sleeping peacefully, Mary put on her hat and went out.

She wanted, in her then state of mind, to walk in the solitude which can only be found in crowded places, and also she wanted some kind of distraction.

Her days had lately been so filled with adventure that the placid immobility of the top back room was not only irksome but maddening, and her mother’s hasty and troubled breathing came between her and her thoughts.

Doctors also expect payment for their services—an expectation so wildly beyond the range of common sense as to be ludicrous.

Those who can scarcely fee a baker when they are in health can certainly not remunerate a physician when they are ill.

But, despite her sickness, Mrs. Makebelieve was worried with the practical common politics of existence. The food purchased with her last sevenpence was eaten beyond remembrance.

It did not occur to either of them to send for a doctor. Doctors in such cases are seldom sent for, seldom even thought of.

One falls sick according to some severely definite, implacable law with which it is foolish to quarrel, and one gets well again for no other reason than that it is impossible to be sick forever.

As the night struggles slowly into day, so sickness climbs stealthily into health, and nature has a system of medicining her ailments which might only be thwarted by the ministrations of a mere doctor.

One falls sick according to some severely definite, implacable law with which it is foolish to quarrel, and one gets well again for no other reason than that it is impossible to be sick forever.

As the night struggles slowly into day, so sickness climbs stealthily into health, and nature has a system of medicining her ailments which might only be thwarted by the ministrations of a mere doctor.

Doctors also expect payment for their services—an expectation so wildly beyond the range of common sense as to be ludicrous. Those who can scarcely fee a baker when they are in health can certainly not remunerate a physician when they are ill.

They lived for a time on the only capital they had—the poor furniture of their room. Everything which had even the narrowest margin of value was sold. Mary’s dresses kept them for six days. Her mother’s Sunday skirt fed them for another day.

They held famine at bay with a patchwork quilt and a crazy washstand.

A water jug and a strip of oilcloth tinkled momentarily against the teeth of the wolf and disappeared. The maw of hunger was not incommoded by the window curtain.

Her mother’s Sunday skirt fed them for another day. They held famine at bay with a patchwork quilt and a crazy washstand. A water jug and a strip of oilcloth tinkled momentarily against the teeth of the wolf and disappeared.

The maw of hunger was not incommoded by the window curtain.

At last the room was as bare as a desert and almost as uninhabitable. A room without furniture is a ghostly place. Sounds made therein are uncanny;

A room without furniture is a ghostly place. Sounds made therein are uncanny; even the voice puts off its humanity and rings back with a bleak and hollow note, an empty resonance tinged with the frost of winter.

There is no other sound so deadly, so barren and dispiriting, as the echoes of an empty room.

The gaunt woman in the bed seemed less gaunt than her residence, and there was nothing more to be sent to the pawnbroker or the secondhand dealer.

At last the room was as bare as a desert and almost as uninhabitable.

A room without furniture is a ghostly place.

Sounds made therein are uncanny; even the voice puts off its humanity and rings back with a bleak and hollow note, an empty resonance tinged with the frost of winter.

She did not at all welcome the idea of going to work, but the interest attaching to a new thing, the freshness which vitalises for a time even the dreariest undertaking, prevented her from rueing with any bitterness her first day’s work.

To a young person even work is an adventure, and anything which changes the usual current of life is welcome.

The fire also went with her; in quite a short time the flames had gathered to a blaze, and matured, and concentrated to the glowing redness of perfect combustion; then, when the smoke had disappeared with the flames, she put on the saucepan of water.

It also induces in some a perpetual good-humoured irritability wherein one can slap and cuddle a child in the same instant, or shout threateningly or lovingly, call warningly and murmur encouragingly in an astonishing sequence.

The woman with six children must both physically and mentally travel at a tangent, and when a husband has to be badgered or humoured into the bargain, then the life of such a woman is more complex than is readily understood.

When Mary came home Mrs. Cafferty was sitting on her mother’s bed, two small children and a cat were also on the bed, two slightly bigger children were under the bed, and two others were galloping furiously up and down the room.

A mother is continually driving in oblique directions from her household employments to rescue her children from a multitude of perils.

An infant and a fireplace act upon each other like magnets; a small boy is always trying to eat a kettle or a piece of coal or the backbone of a herring; a little girl and a slop bucket are in immediate contact; the baby has a knife in its mouth; the twin is on the point of swallowing a marble, or is trying to wash itself in the butter, or the cat is about to take a nap on its face.

Indeed, the woman who has six children never knows in what direction her next step must be, and the continual strain of preserving her progeny converts many a one into regular cyclones of eyes and arms and legs.

With immediate buying and selling, and all the absolute forms of exchange and barter, women are deeply engaged, so that the realities of trade are often more intelligible to them than to many merchants.

If men understood domestic economy half as well as women do, then their political economy and their entire consequent statecraft would not be the futile muddle which it is.

It was all very interesting to Mary, and, moreover, she had a great desire for companionship at the moment.

that was her theme.

Never be a servant in your heart, said she.

To work is nothing; the king on his throne, the priest kneeling before the Holy Altar, all people in all places had to work, but no person at all need be a servant.

that was her theme. Never be a servant in your heart, said she.

To work is nothing; the king on his throne, the priest kneeling before the Holy Altar, all people in all places had to work, but no person at all need be a servant.

One worked and was paid, and went away keeping the integrity of one’s soul unspotted and serene. If an employer was wise or good or kind, Mrs. Makebelieve was prepared to accord such a person instant and humble reverence.

In a little city like Dublin one meets every person whom one knows within a few days. Around each bend in the road there is a friend, an enemy, or a bore striding towards you, so that, with a piety which is almost religious, one says “touch wood” before turning any corner.

It was not long, therefore, until Mary again met the big policeman. He came up behind her and walked by her side, chatting with a pleasant ease, in which, however, her curious mind could discover some obscure distinctions.

As they walked along Mary was in a fever of discomfort. She wished dumbly that the man would go away, but for the wealth of the world she could not have brought herself to hurt the feelings of so big a man.

To endanger the very natural dignity of a big man was a thing which no woman could do without a pang; the shame of it made her feel hot: he might have blushed or stammered, and the memory of that would sting her miserably for weeks as though she had insulted an elephant or a baby.

She could not get away from him.

progress can be, and is, accelerated by the hypocrisies and snobbishness, all the minor, unpleasant adjuncts of mediocrity.

Snobbishness is a puling infant, but it may grow to a deeply whiskered ambition, and most virtues are, on examination, the amalgam of many vices.

But while intellectual poverty may be forgiven and loved, social inequality can only be utilised.

Children require an attention which occupies the entire of a mother’s time, and, consequently, she was prevented from seeking abroad any mitigation of her hardships. The occupations which might be engaged in at home were closed to her by mere overwhelming competition.

The number of women who are prepared to make ten million shirts for a penny is already far in excess of the demand, and so, except by a severe undercutting such as a contract to make twenty million shirts for a halfpenny, work of this description is very difficult to obtain.

Under these circumstances nothing remained for Mrs. Cafferty but to take in a lodger. This is a form of cooperation much practised among the poorer people.

Love and hate are equally magnetic and compelling, and each, being supernormal, drags us willingly or woefully in its wake, until at last our blind persistency is either routed or appeased, and we advance our lauds or gnash our teeth as the occasion bids us.

There is no tragedy more woeful than the victory of hate, nor any attainment so hopelessly barren as the sterility of that achievement; for hate is finality, and finality is the greatest evil which can happen in a world of movement.

Love is an inaugurator displaying his banners on captured peaks and pressing forever to a new and more gracious enterprise, but the victories of hate are gained in a ditch from which there is no horizon visible, and whence there does not go even one …

There is no tragedy more woeful than the victory of hate, nor any attainment so hopelessly barren as the sterility of that achievement; for hate is finality, and finality is the greatest evil which can happen in a world of movement.

Love is an inaugurator displaying his banners on captured peaks and pressing forever to a new and more gracious enterprise, but the victories of hate are gained in a ditch from which there is no horizon visible, and whence there does not go even one limping courier.

After Mary fled from the embrace of the great policeman he came to think more closely of her than he had been used; but her image was throned now in anger:

and Mary also found new interests in speech, for although the young man thought very differently from her, he did think upon her own plane, and the things which secretly engrossed him were also the things wherewith she was deeply preoccupied.

A community of ignorances may be as binding as a community of interests.

We have a dull suspicion of that him or her who knows more than we do, but the person who is prepared to go out adventuring with us, with surmise only for a chart and enjoyment for a guide, may use our hand as his …

A community of ignorances may be as binding as a community of interests.

We have a dull suspicion of that him or her who knows more than we do, but the person who is prepared to go out adventuring with us, with surmise only for a chart and enjoyment for a guide, may use our hand as his own and our pockets as his treasury.

As the young man had no more shyness than a cat, it soon fell out that he and Mary took their evening walks together.

She was too used now to being a mother to relinquish easily the prerogatives of that status, and her discontent had this justification and assistance that it could be put into definite words, fronted and approved or rejected as reason urged.

By knowledge and thought we will look through a stone wall if we look long enough, for we see less through eyes than through Time.

Time is the clarifying perspective whereby myopia of any kind is adjusted, and a thought emerges in its field as visibly as a tree does in nature’s. Mrs.

If the unexpected did not often happen life would be a logical, scientific progression which might become dispirited and repudiate its goal for very boredom, but nature has cunningly diversified the methods whereby she coaxes or coerces us to prosecute, not our own, but her own adventure.

Beyond every corner there may be a tavern or a church wherein both the saint and the sinner may be entrapped and remoulded.

… unexpected did not often happen life would be a logical, scientific progression which might become dispirited and repudiate its goal for very boredom, but nature has cunningly diversified the methods whereby she coaxes or coerces us to prosecute, not our own, but her own adventure.

Beyond every corner there may be a tavern or a church wherein both the saint and the sinner may be entrapped and remoulded.

Beyond the skyline you may find a dynamite cartridge, a drunken tinker, a mad dog, or a shilling which some person has dropped;

Beyond every corner there may be a tavern or a church wherein both the saint and the sinner may be entrapped and remoulded.

Beyond the skyline you may find a dynamite cartridge, a drunken tinker, a mad dog, or a shilling which some person has dropped; and any one of these unexpectednesses may be potent to urge the traveller down a side street and put a crook in the straight line which had been his life, and to which he had become miserably reconciled.

The element of surprise being, accordingly, one of the commonest things in the world, we ought not to be hypercritical in our review of singularities, or say, “These things do not happen”—because it is indisputable that they do happen.