Romance quotes

To yesterday and to today I say my polite “vaya usted con Dios.” What are these days to me?

But that far-off day of my romance, when from between the blue and white bales in Don Ramon’s darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I saw the door open before the figure of an old man with the tired, long, white face, that day I am not …

We stood in a little slanting cutting in the shadow. A watery light before the moon’s rising slanted downwards from the hilltop along the opposite bank. We stood in utter silence.

“If you stir a hair,” my captor said coolly, “I’ll squeeze the blood out of your throat, like a rotten orange.”

He had the calmness of one dealing with an everyday incident; yet the incident was—it should have been—tremendous. We stood waiting silently for an eternity, as one waits for a hare to break covert before the beaters.

It was the voice of Barnes, and the voice of the every day. I discovered that I had been tremendously upset. The pulses in my temples were throbbing, and I wanted to shut my eyes—to sleep! I was tired; Romance had departed.

Barnes and the Macdonald he had found for me represented all the laborious insects of the world; all the ants who are forever hauling immensely heavy and immensely unimportant burdens up weary hillocks, down steep places, getting nowhere and doing nothing.

Nevertheless I hurried up, stumbling at the hatchway against a man who was looking down. He said nothing at all, and I was dazed by the light. Barnes remarked hurriedly, “This’ll be your Mr. Macdonald”; and, turning his back on me, forgot my existence.

She had once visited the Rooksbys at Horton; she had treasured up a host of tiny things, parts of my forgotten boyhood, and she talked of them and talked of them until that past seemed a wholly desirable time, and the present a dull thing!

Journeying in search of romance⁠—and that, after all, is our business in this world⁠—is much like trying to catch the horizon.

It lies a little distance before us, and a little distance behind—about as far as the eye can carry. One, discovers that one has passed through it just as one passed what is today our horizon. One looks back and says, “Why there it is.”

One, discovers that one has passed through it just as one passed what is today our horizon. One looks back and says, “Why there it is.” One looks forward and says the same.

It lies either in the old days when we used to, or in the new days when we shall.

I look back upon those days of mine, and little things remain, come back to me, assume an atmosphere, take significance, go to the making of a temps jadis.

O’Brien grinned gently.

“ ’Tis ever the way,” he said sardonically. “The English fools do the harm and the Irish fool gets the kicking.”

He rose to his feet, quite collected, a spick-and-span little man. “I suppose I’ve said too much. Well, well! You are going to denounce the senior judge of the Marine Court of Havana as a pirate. I wonder who will believe you!”

I was glad I had not thanked her for taking an interest in me.

I was distressed, too, because once more I had missed Romance by an inch.

Someone kicked at the locked door. A voice cried—I could not help thinking—warningly, “Seraphina, Seraphina,” and another voice said with excessive softness, “Señorita! Voyons! quelle folie.”

They built their houses thus, centuries ago, when the bands of buccaneers, indomitable and atrocious, had haunted their conquest with a reminder of mortality and weakness.

It was a tremendous thing for me, this dinner.

The portly duenna on my left had a round eye and an irritated, parrot-like profile, crowned by a high comb, a head shaded by black lace.

When these were gone he grubbed for more in the depths of his clothing, somewhere near his skin.

Puffs of smoke issued from his pursed lips; and the desolation of his pose, the sorrow of his round, wrinkled face, was so great that it seemed were he to cease smoking, he would die of grief.

The general effect of the place was of vitality exhausted, of a body calcined, of romance turned into stone.

Puffs of smoke issued from his pursed lips; and the desolation of his pose, the sorrow of his round, wrinkled face, was so great that it seemed were he to cease smoking, he would die of grief.

The general effect of the place was of vitality exhausted, of a body calcined, of romance turned into stone.

The still air, the hot sunshine, the white beach curving around the deserted sheet of water, the sombre green of the hills, had the motionlessness of things petrified, the vividness of things painted, the sadness of things abandoned, desecrated.

I had made a sort of hermitage for myself out of a house in a distant plantation, and sometimes I would see no white face for whole weeks together.

She was the first woman to me⁠—a strange new being, a marvel as great as Eve herself to Adam’s wondering awakening.

It may be that a close intimacy stands in the way of love springing up between two young people, but in our case it was different. My passion seemed to spring from our understanding, because the understanding was in the face of danger.

It may be that a close intimacy stands in the way of love springing up between two young people, but in our case it was different. My passion seemed to spring from our understanding, because the understanding was in the face of danger.

We were like two people in a slowly sinking ship; the feeling of the abyss under our feet was our bond, not the real comprehension of each other.

Apart from that, she remained to me always unattainable and romantic—unique, with all the unexpressed promises of love such as no world had ever known. And naturally, because for me, hitherto, the world had held no woman.

I heard her voice, and felt her form in my arms. Her lips at my ear pronounced:

“Remember, Juan. Two lives, but one death only.”

And she was gone so quickly that it was as though she had passed through the wood of the massive panels.

“You are wrong in your surmise.

I would have nothing to do with a rebel, even in my thoughts and suppositions.

I think that the Intendente of Don Balthasar Riego would look twice before murdering in a bedroom the guest of the house—a relation, a friend of the family.”

What weapons better worthy of you could I use? Oh, I am modest. I am modest. This is a little thing, this Jamaica. What do I care for the Separationist blatherskite more than for the loyal fools? You are all English to me.

If I had my way, your Empire would die of pinpricks all over its big, overgrown body.

Let only one bit drop off. If robbing your ships may help it, then, as you see me standing here, I am ready to go myself in a leaky boat. I tell you Jamaica’s gone. And that may be the beginning of the end.”

Blood rushed to my face. I lost control over myself. “Mr. O’Brien,” I said, “I dare say you could have trumped up anything against me. You are a very great scoundrel.”

“Why? Because I don’t lie about my motives, as you all do? I would wish you to know that I would scorn to lie either to myself or to you.”

I touched the haft of the sword on the table. It was lying with the point his way.

he loved her with a great strength of paternal instinct that no vow of celibacy can extinguish, and with a heroic sense of his priestly duty. And I was not to say him nay. The sea—so be it.

It was easier to think of her dead than to think of her immured; it was better that she should be the victim of the sea than of evil men; that she should be lost with me than to me.

Father Antonio, with that naive sense of the poetry of the sky he possessed, apostrophized the moon, the “gentle orb,” as he called it, which ought to be weary of looking at the miseries of the earth.

And, as I heard her say this, it seemed really to me as if, in very truth, my sentiments were noble and my heart chivalrous.

Such is the power of a girl’s voice.

The door closed on us, and I felt very humble.

There was something romantically sombre in his devotion.

He disdained to turn round at the danger, because he had left his heart on the coffin as a lesser affection would have laid a wreath.

I looked down at Seraphina. She too, had left a heart in the vaults of the cathedral. The edge of the heavy cloak drawn over her head concealed her face from me, and, with her face, her ignorance, her great doubts, her great fears.

She gave no sign of having heard Castro’s words.

The silence of women is very impenetrable

, and it was as if my hold upon the world—since she was the whole world for me—had been weakened by that shade of decency of feeling which makes a distinction between killing and murder.

As at that time, when he had been nursing his truculent conceit, he sang, and the unsteady twanging of his guitar lurched and staggered far behind his voice, like a drunken slave in the footsteps of a raving master.

Tinkle, tinkle, twang! A headlong rush of muddled fingering; a sudden bang, like a heavy stumble.

“She is the proud daughter of the old Castile! Olà! Olà!” he chanted mysteriously at the beginning of every stanza in a rapturous and soft ecstasy, and then would shriek, as though he had been suddenly cast up on the rock.

“All ready to dish up, sir,” a voice answered him.

It was like a sort of madness. Were they thinking of eating?

Even at that the English talk made my heart expand—the homeliness of it. I seemed to know all their voices, as if I had talked to each man before. It brought back memories, like the voices of friends.

It seemed to affect him a good deal.

“Wait till you are caught by a good woman yourself,” he mumbled wretchedly.

Was this the roystering Williams? The jolly good fellow? I wanted to laugh, a little hysterically, because of the worry after great fatigue. Was his wife such a terrifying virago? “A good woman,” Williams insisted. I turned my eyes to Sebright, who looked on amusedly.

He revolted and provoked me, as if his opinion of the English could matter, or his point of view signify anything against the authority of my conscience.

And it is our conscience that illumines the romantic side of our life.

His point of view was as benighted and primitive as the point of view of hunger;

What of it? The time was coming when I should remember the frail, homely, as if starved, woman, and thank heaven for her generous heart, which was gained for us from that moment. Far from being offended, I was drawn to her.

There is a beauty in the absolute conscience of the simple; and besides, her distrust was for me, alone.

I saw that she erected herself not into a judge, but into a guardian, against the dangers of our youth and our romance. She was disturbed by its origin.

“Sense,” I answered contemptuously.

“There is no sense in anything. There is necessity. Necessity.”

He remained silent for a time, peering at me.

With the dignity of a supreme confidence she extended her hand. It was one of the culminating moments of our love.

For love is like a journey in mountainous country, up through the clouds, and down into the shadows to an unknown destination.

It was a moment rapt and full of feeling, in which we seemed to dwell together high up and alone—till she withdrew her hand from my lips, and I found myself back in the cabin, as if precipitated from a lofty place.

How often the activity of our life is the least real part of it!

Life, looked upon as a whole, presents itself to my fancy as a pursuit with open arms of a winged and magnificent dream, hovering just over our heads and casting its glory upon our hopes.

and I saw her smile come back again a little changed, more meaning and a little less mirthful, as if her lips had been made stiff by sorrow.

But she was young; and youth, the time of softness, of tenderness, of enthusiasm, and of pity, presents a surface as hard as marble to the finality of death.

Breathing side by side, drinking in the sunshine, and talking of ourselves not at all, but casting the sense of our love like a magnificent garment over the wide significance of a world already conquered, we could not help being made aware of the currents …

How often the activity of our life is the least real part of it!

Life, looked upon as a whole, presents itself to my fancy as a pursuit with open arms of a winged and magnificent dream, hovering just over our heads and casting its glory upon our hopes.

It is in this simple vision, which is one and enduring, and not in the changing facts, that we must look for meaning and for truth.

The calm had returned.

The sea, changing from the warm glitter of a gem, and attuned to the grays and blacks of space, resembled a monstrous cinder under a sky of ashes.

The sun had disappeared, smothered in these clouds that had formed themselves all at once and everywhere, like some swift corruption of the upper air.

Since we were lost, he at least should be saved from this. I suffered from his spasmodic, agonized laugh away there, with twenty knives aimed at his breast and the eighty-foot drop of the precipice at his back. Why did he hesitate?

I was to learn, then, that the ultimate value of life to all of us is based on the means of self-deception.

Morally he had his back against the wall, he could not hope to deceive himself; and after Manuel had cried again at him, “Where are they?” in a really terrible tone, I heard his answer:

What could have been these seductions to a drink? No soul had thirsted after things unlawful as my parched throat thirsted for water.

No devil had ever tempted a man with such a bribe of perdition.

I suffered from the lucidity of my feelings. I saw, with indignation, my own wretched self being angled for like a fish. And with all that, in my forlorn state, I remained prudent. I did not rush out blindly. No.

We were flying not to save our lives, but to preserve inviolate our truth to each other and to ourselves. And if our sentiments appear exaggerated, violent, and overstrained, I must point back to their origin.

Our love had not grown like a delicate flower, cherished in tempered sunshine.

It had never known the atmosphere of tenderness; our souls had not been awakened to each other by a gentle whisper, but as if by the blast of a trumpet. It had called us to a life whose enemy was not death, but separation.

Our love had not grown like a delicate flower, cherished in tempered sunshine. It had never known the atmosphere of tenderness; our souls had not been awakened to each other by a gentle whisper, but as if by the blast of a trumpet.

It had called us to a life whose enemy was not death, but separation.

The enemy sat at the gate of our shelter, as death sits at the gate of life. These high walls could not protect us, nor the tearful mumble of the old woman’s prayers, nor yet the careworn fidelity of Enrico.

“Don’t you dream of tricks.

I’ve cut more throats than you’ve kissed gals in your little life.

”

I understood that they wanted to hang me, and I wanted not to be hung, desperately, from that moment. I had not much cared before; I had—call it, moped. I had not really believed, really sensed it out.

It isn’t easy to conceive that one is going to be hanged, I doubt if one does even with the rope round one’s neck.

I hadn’t much wanted to live, but now I wanted to fight—one good fight before I went under for good and all, condemned or acquitted. There wasn’t anything left for me to live for, Seraphina could not be alive. The Lion must have been lost.

The cement wanted a little blood in the mixing. Damn them! I was going to make a fight; they had torn me from Seraphina, to fulfill their own accursed ends.

I felt myself grow harsh and strong, as a tree feels itself grow gnarled by winter storms.

I said to the turnkey again and again: