Short Fiction quotes

I went afterwards, and as I am well acquainted with all who went then, and have had circumstantial information of all that happened, I think that my account of the affair will be as intelligible as anyone’s.

I am conceited enough to think that if I had gone, the man I love most in the world would not now be in an asylum.

The Peaslake party was most harmonious in its composition. Four out of the five were Peaslakes, which partly accounted for the success, but the fifth, Harold, seemed to have been created to go with them.

Human beings were scanty, and they were stunted and dry, mere withered vestiges of men.

And far below at the bottom of the yellow waste was the moving living sea, which embraced Sicily when she was green and delicate and young, and embraces her now, when she is brown and withered and dying.

“I see something more interesting than the sea,” said Mildred. “I see Girgenti.”

Lilian was surprised and pained. Her father had never blamed anyone so strongly before. She did not know—indeed, he did not know himself—that neither the indigestion nor the heat, nor the beggars, nor the fleas were the real cause of his irritation.

He was annoyed because he failed to understand.

Mildred he could pardon; she had merely been indiscreet, and as she had gone in for being clever when quite a child, such things were to be expected from her.

Besides, he shrewdly guessed that, although she might sometimes indulge in fancies, yet when it came to action she could be trusted to behave in a thoroughly conventional manner.

Thank heaven! she was seldom guilty of confusing books with life.

But Harold did not escape so easily, for Sir Edwin absolutely failed to understand him, for the first time. Hitherto he had believed that he understood him perfectly. Harold’s character was so simple;

Harold was not on the path, and Mildred was naturally annoyed.

Few things are more vexatious for a young lady than to go out with an escort and return without.

It argues remissness on her own part quite as much as on that of her swain.

The indignant Mildred was about to wake him, but seeing the dark line that still showed beneath his eyes, stayed her voice. Besides, he looked so picturesque, and she herself, sitting on the stone watching him, must look picturesque, too.

She knew that there was no one to look at her, but from her mind the idea of a spectator was never absent for a moment. It was the price she had paid for becoming cultivated.

Sleep has little in common with death, to which men have compared it.

She knew that there was no one to look at her, but from her mind the idea of a spectator was never absent for a moment. It was the price she had paid for becoming cultivated.

Sleep has little in common with death, to which men have compared it.

Harold’s limbs lay in utter relaxation, but he was tingling with life, glorying in the bounty of the earth and the warmth of the sun, and the little blue flower bent and fluttered like a tree in a gale.

Sir Edwin, not unmoved, stood before him for a moment, stammering as he tried to think of something that should both rebuke and console.

But the world has forgotten what to say to men of twenty-four who cry.

Sir Edwin followed his daughter, giving a despairing look at Lady Peaslake and Lilian as he departed.

Ethel was his youngest daughter, still unmarried. She was unselfish and affectionate, and it was generally understood that she was to devote her life to her father, and be the comfort of his old age. Mrs. Forman always referred to her as Antigone, and

Mr. Lucas tried to settle down to the role of Oedipus, which seemed the only one that public opinion allowed him.

He had this in common with Oedipus, that he was growing old. Even to himself it had become obvious. He had lost interest in other people’s affairs, and seldom attended when they spoke to him.

But Athens had been dusty, Delphi wet, Thermopylae flat, and he had listened with amazement and cynicism to the rapturous exclamations of his companions.

Greece was like England: it was a man who was growing old, and it made no difference whether that man looked at the Thames or the Eurotas.

It was his last hope of contradicting that logic of experience, and it was failing.

Greece was like England: it was a man who was growing old, and it made no difference whether that man looked at the Thames or the Eurotas. It was his last hope of contradicting that logic of experience, and it was failing.

Yet Greece had done something for him, though he did not know it. It had made him discontented, and there are stirrings of life in discontent.

He knew that he was not the victim of continual ill-luck. Something great was wrong, and he was pitted against no mediocre or accidental enemy. For the last month a strange desire had possessed him to die fighting.

It had made him discontented, and there are stirrings of life in discontent. He knew that he was not the victim of continual ill-luck. Something great was wrong, and he was pitted against no mediocre or accidental enemy.

For the last month a strange desire had possessed him to die fighting.

“Greece is the land for young people,” he said to himself as he stood under the plane trees, “but I will enter into it, I will possess it. Leaves shall be green again, water shall be sweet, the sky shall be blue.

Little votive offerings to the presiding Power were fastened on to the bark—tiny arms and legs and eyes in tin, grotesque models of the brain or the heart—all tokens of some recovery of strength or wisdom or love.

There was no such thing as the solitude of nature for the sorrows and joys of humanity had pressed even into the bosom of a tree.

He spread out his arms and steadied himself against the soft charred wood, and then slowly leant back, till his body was resting on the trunk behind.

Obedience was not his strong point. He invariably questioned every command, and only executed it grumbling.

I should always insist on prompt and cheerful obedience, if I had a son.

“I’m—coming—Aunt—Mary,” he at last replied, and dawdled to cut a piece of wood to make a whistle, taking care not to arrive till we had finished.

It was not the spiritual fear that one has known at other times, but brutal overmastering physical fear, stopping up the ears, and dropping clouds before the eyes, and filling the mouth with foul tastes.

And it was no ordinary humiliation that survived; for I had been afraid, not as a man, but as a beast.

I cannot describe our finish any better than our start; for our fear passed away as it had come, without cause. Suddenly I was able to see, and hear, and cough, and clear my mouth. Looking back, I saw that the others were stopping too;

After more vague wonderings, obscurely expressed owing to the presence of Janet and the two American ladies, we all went to bed, too, after a harassing and most extraordinary day.

But the day was nothing to the night.

I suppose I had slept for about four hours, when I woke suddenly thinking I heard a noise in the garden.

The hedge could not be as thick as usual. In my weak, morbid state, I longed to force my way in, and see what was on the other side. No one was in sight, or I should not have dared to try.

For we of the road do not admit in conversation that there is another side at all.

I yielded to the temptation, saying to myself that I would come back in a minute. The thorns scratched my face, and I had to use my arms as a shield, depending on my feet alone to push me forward.

He said: “

It means nothing but itself

”—and he repeated the words slowly, as if I were a child.

“

I had rather he made me a fool than that I thought he was one

,” she said, after a long pause.

“No!” exclaimed Miss Raby, so irritably that Elizabeth looked back to see what was wrong. “You are stupid.

Kindness and money are both quite easy to part with. The only thing worth giving away is yourself.

Did you ever give yourself away?”

“I shall bear it if it is,” she continued gently. “

I am too old to be a tragedy queen as well as an evil genius.

”

Neither professed to be a virgin soul, or to be ignorant of the other’s limitations and inconsistencies. They scarcely even made allowances for each other.

Toleration implies reserve; and the greatest safeguard of unruffled intercourse is knowledge.

Colonel Leyland had courage of no mean order: he cared little for the opinion of people whom he understood. Nelly and Lionel and their babes were welcome to be shocked or displeased. Miss Raby was an authoress, a kind of radical;

But hitherto he had only revealed his identity by chance gestures bequeathed to him at birth. Intercourse with the gentle classes had required new qualities—civility, omniscience, imperturbability. It was the old answer: the gentle classes were responsible for him.

It is inevitable, as well as desirable, that we should bear each other’s burdens.

It was absurd to blame Feo for his worldliness—for his essential vulgarity. He had not made himself. It was even absurd to regret his transformation from an athlete:

She would hardly have ventured if the sufferings of the day had not hardened her.

After much pain, respectability becomes ludicrous.

And she had only to overcome the difficulty of Feo’s being a man, not the difficulty of his being a concierge. She had never observed that spiritual reticence towards social inferiors which is usual at the present day.

For all her correct behaviour and ladylike display, she had been in love with Feo, and she had never loved so greatly again.

A presumptuous boy had taken her to the gates of heaven; and, though she would not enter with him, the eternal remembrance of the vision had made life seem endurable and good.

Colonel Leyland, by her side, babbled respectabilities, trying to pass the situation off as normal. He was saving her, for he liked her very much, and it pained him when she was foolish. But her last remark to Feo had frightened him;

“But these beautiful thoughts are a poor business, are they not?” she continued, addressing Feo, who was losing his gallant air, and becoming bewildered. “

They’re hardly enough to grow old on.

I think I would give all my imagination, all my skill with words, if I could recapture one crude fact, if I could replace one single person whom I have broken.”

but at last he found that our hills also understood his sorrows, and rejoiced when he was happy. Or, perhaps he came to be there because he had been there always.

There is nothing particularly classical about a faun: it is only that the Greeks and Italians have ever had the sharpest eyes.

You will find him in the “Tempest” and the “Benedicite;” and any country which has beech clumps and sloping grass and very clear streams may reasonably produce him.

No man has the right to call himself a fool, but I may say that I then presented the perfect semblance of one.

I was facetious without humour and serious without conviction.

Every Sunday I would speak to my rural parishioners about the other world in the tone of one who has been behind the scenes, or I would explain to them the errors of the Pelagians, or I would warn them against hurrying from one dissipation …

And every Thursday I addressed the Mothers’ Union on the duties of wives or widows, and gave them practical hints on the management of a family of ten.

I took myself in, and for a time I certainly took in Emily.

I have never known a girl attend so carefully to my sermons, or laugh so heartily at my jokes. It is no wonder that I became engaged.

able to talk about the subconscious self in the drawing-room, and yet have an ear for the children crying in the nursery, or the plates breaking in the scullery. An excellent wife—better than I ever imagined.

But she has not married me.

Had we stopped indoors that afternoon nothing would have happened. It was all owing to Emily’s mother, who insisted on our tea-ing out. Opposite the village, across the stream, was a small chalk down, crowned by a beech copse, and a few Roman earthworks.

able to talk about the subconscious self in the drawing-room, and yet have an ear for the children crying in the nursery, or the plates breaking in the scullery. An excellent wife—better than I ever imagined. But she has not married me.

Had we stopped indoors that afternoon nothing would have happened.

It was all owing to Emily’s mother, who insisted on our tea-ing out. Opposite the village, across the stream, was a small chalk down, crowned by a beech copse, and a few Roman earthworks. (I lectured very vividly on those earthworks:

For here is the body of the great chalk spider who straddles over our island—whose legs are the south downs and the north downs and the Chilterns, and the tips of whose toes poke out at Cromer and Dover.

He is a clean creature, who grows as few trees as he can, and those few in tidy clumps, and he loves to be tickled by quickly flowing streams.

He is pimpled all over with earthworks, for from the beginning of time men have fought for the privilege of standing on him, and the oldest of our temples is built upon his back.

“Silent, indeed,” echoed the little friend.

Silent! the place was full of noises.

If the match had fallen in a drawing-room it could not have been worse, and the loudest noise came from beside Emily herself.

That’ll smoulder away and harm no one. Tea‑ee‑ee! I always say—and you will find Emily the same—that as the magic hour of five approaches, no matter how good a lunch, one begins to feel a sort of—”

Now the Faun is of the kind who capers upon the Neo-Attic reliefs, and if you do not notice his ears or see his tail, you take him for a man and are horrified.

“Bathing!” I cried wildly. “Such a thing for our village lads, but I quite agree—more supervision—I blame myself. Go away, bad boy, go away!”

And as night came on I knew for certain that not only was he asleep, but that the hills and woods were asleep also. The stream, of course, never slept, any more than it ever freezes.

Indeed, the hour of darkness is really the hour of water, which has been somewhat stifled all day by the great pulsings of the land.

That is why you can feel it and hear it from a greater distance in the night, and why a bath after sundown is most wonderful.

For though my draughts were not better nor subtler than those of other men, yet, by reason of the cunning goblets wherein I offered them, the queasy soul was ofttimes tempted to sip and be refreshed.”

“The queasy soul,” he murmured; “if the sun sets with trees in front of it, and you suddenly come strange all over, is that a queasy soul?”

After a pause he told the boy a little, a very little, about the journey’s end.

“After all,” said Mr. Bons, smiling, “there is something a little like it in Wagner.

It is odd how, in quite illiterate minds, you will find glimmers of Artistic Truth.

The case interests me. Let me plead for the culprit. We have all romanced in our time, haven’t we?”

The driver replied, “

I am the means and not the end. I am the food and not the life.

Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth.”

“Classical education,” I said drily, “is not entirely confined to classical mythology. Though even the mythology has its value. Dreams if you like, but there is value in dreams.”

“I too have dreams,” said Mrs. Worters, “but I am not so foolish as to mention them afterwards.”

Mercifully we were interrupted. A rich virile voice close behind us said, “Cherish your dreams!” We had been joined by our host, Harcourt Worters—Mrs. Worters’ son, Miss Beaumont’s fiancé. Ford’s guardian, my employer: I must speak of him as Mr. Worters.

“Oh, yes. It must be.”

Ford possesses a most inflammatory notebook. Outside it is labelled “Private,” inside it is headed “Practically a book.”

I saw him make an entry in it now, “Eternity: practically ninety-nine years.”

I felt for Miss Beaumont.

A homemade gable is an awful thing, and Harcourt’s mansion looked like a cottage with the dropsy.

But what would she say?

It was as if he had never spoken. She was as merry, as smiling, as pretty as ever, and she said nothing.

She had not realized that a question requires an answer.

For us the situation was intolerable. I had to save it by making a tactful reference to the view, which, I said, reminded me a little of the country near Veii. It did not—indeed it could not, for I have never been near Veii.

“Oh, fence me out if you like!

Fence me out as much as you like! But never in.

Oh Harcourt, never in. I must be on the outside, I must be where anyone can reach me. Year by year—while the initials deepen—the only thing worth feeling—and at last they close up—but one has felt them.”

Her spirits improved every minute. She tripped in front of us along the asphalt path, and ever and anon turned round to say to her lover some gracious or alluring thing. I admired her for it.

I admire people who know on which side their bread’s buttered.

“Come and take it then.”

She was beside us, above us; here was her footstep on the purple-brown earth—her bosom, her neck—she was everywhere and nowhere.

Gaiety turned to irritation, irritation to anger and fear.

Miss Beaumont was apparently lost. “Evelyn! Evelyn!” we continued to cry. “Oh, really, it is beyond a joke.”

“You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other. “I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy.

Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men.

The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come.

The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit.

Something “good enough” had long since been accepted by our race.

“The truth is,” he continued, “that I want to see these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to see them not from the airship, but from the surface of the earth, as our ancestors did, thousands of years ago.

And of course she had studied the civilisation that had immediately preceded her own—the civilisation that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people.

Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!

And yet—she was frightened of the tunnel: she had not seen it since her last child was born. It curved—but not quite as she remembered; it was brilliant—but not quite as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested.

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilisation had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself.

What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would be just like Peking?

Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilisation had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would be just like Peking?

Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

The airship service was a relic from the former age. It was kept up, because it was easier to keep it up than to stop it or to diminish it, but it now far exceeded the wants of the population.

But always, as it passed above Rheims, it would neighbour the ship that served between Helsingfors and the Brazils, and, every third time it surmounted the Alps, the fleet of Palermo would cross its track behind.

Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan.

All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.

Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan.

All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.

Yet as Vashti saw the vast flank of the ship, stained with exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct experience returned. It was not quite like the airship in the cinematophote.

‘Far’ is a place to which I cannot get quickly on my feet; the vomitory is ‘far,’ though I could be there in thirty-eight seconds by summoning the train. Man is the measure. That was my first lesson.

Man’s feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.

Then I went further: it was then that I called to you for the first time, and you would not come.

“

Cannot you see, cannot all your lecturers see, that it is we who are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine?

We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now.

“Cannot you see, cannot all your lecturers see, that it is we who are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine?

We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now.

It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.

To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand.

Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence.

The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished.

Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But

Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself.

It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not bear that this should be the end. Ere silence was completed their hearts were opened, and they knew what had been important on the earth.

Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.

Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with the colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self-denial.

The two souls floated upwards in silence, but did not release each other’s hands.

“I am broad church,” he added gently. The word “broad” quavered strangely amid the interspaces.

“Relate to me your career,” said the Turk at last.

As he wished, the forms of the virgins became more rounded, and their eyes grew larger and blacker than before. And Mr. Andrews, by a wish similar in kind, increased the purity and softness of his garment and the glitter of his harp.

For in that place their expectations were fulfilled, but not their hopes.

“I am going,” said Mr. Andrews at last. “We desire infinity and we cannot imagine it. How can we expect it to be granted? I have never imagined anything infinitely good or beautiful excepting in my dreams.”

“I am going,” said Mr. Andrews at last. “

We desire infinity and we cannot imagine it. How can we expect it to be granted?

I have never imagined anything infinitely good or beautiful excepting in my dreams.”

They did not, because he lived to be over seventy, and with the best will in the world, it is impossible to remember clearly for so long.

The mind, however sensitive and affectionate, is coated with new experiences daily; it cannot clear itself of the steady accretion, and is forced either to forget the past or to distort it.

So it was with Michael. In time only the more dramatic incidents survived.

This life is a preparation for the next. Those who live longest are consequently the best prepared.

Experience is the great teacher; blessed are the experienced, for they need not further modify their ideals.

The manner of his death was as follows. He, too, met with an accident. He was walking from his town house to Catherine’s by a shortcut through a slum; some women were quarrelling about a fish, and as he passed they appealed to him.

“Well, he has,” said Adam. “I don’t believe in cant. He never did anything since Mother died, and damned little before. They’ve forgotten his books because they aren’t firsthand; they’re rearranging the cases he arranged in the British Museum. That’s the lot.

What else has he done except tell people to dress warmly, but not too warm?

”

He had seen good in everything, and this is itself a sign of decay. Whatever occurred he had been appreciative, tolerant, pliant. Consequently he had been a success; Adam was right; it was the moment in civilisation for his type.

He had mistaken self-criticism for self-discipline, he had muffled in himself and others the keen, heroic edge.

Yet the luxury of repentance was denied him. The fault was his, but the fate humanity’s, for everyone grows hard or soft as he grows old.

“I have been all men, but all men have forgotten me. I transfigured the world for them until they preferred the world. They came to me as children, afraid; I taught them, and they despised me.

Childhood is a dream about me, experience a slow forgetting: I govern the magic years between them, and am.

”

Four o’clock struck. Mildred and Ellen went, and Rose and Enid succeeded them.

They played the duet worse than Mildred, but not as badly as Ellen.

At four-fifteen Margaret and Jane came. They played worse than Rose and Enid, but not as badly as Ellen. At four-thirty Dolores and Violet came. They played worse than Ellen.

“Well, I must make a confession,” the Principal continued. “No more do I. In fact, I hate it. But I was obliged to take it up, because that type of thing impresses the Board of Education.”

At this all the mistresses and girls laughed and cheered, and Dolores and Violet, who thought that the Board of Education was a new round game, laughed too.

Now it may be readily imagined that this discreditable affair did not escape the attention of Mephistopheles. At the earliest opportunity he sought the Judgment Seat, bearing an immense scroll inscribed “J’accuse!”

At the earliest opportunity he sought the Judgment Seat, bearing an immense scroll inscribed “J’accuse!” Halfway up he met the angel Raphael, who asked him in his courteous manner whether he could help him in any way.

“Not this time, thank you,” Mephistopheles replied. “I really have a case now.”

“It might be better to show it to me,” suggested the archangel. “It would be a pity to fly so far for nothing, and you had such a disappointment over Job.”