The Monster quotes

When the clergyman had gone, the bride turned.

Before her was an open window before which was the open sea.

In the air was a tropical languor, a savour of brine, the scent of lilies, the sound of mandolins that are far away. Below, in the garden, were masses of scarlet, high heaps of geranium blooms.

She, with her delicate features, her dense black hair, and disquieting eyes, looked like a Madrilene Madonna—one of those fascinating and slightly shocking creations of seventeenth-century art that more nearly resemble infantas serenaded by caballeros than queens of the sky. There was a deeper contrast.

He appeared frankly material; she, all soul.

“One might know,” she began, then paused. A smile completed the sentence.

It was, he knew from the imprint, a communication of no importance; but, at the moment, the action seemed a reply to her remark. It served to indicate his complete indifference to everything and everyone save her only.

Afterward, with a regret that was to be eternal, she wished he had done the same with hers.

Yet, pleased at the time, she smiled.

after it, the second letter, and the third.

Then, as truth stared at her and she at truth, so monstrous was its aspect that, with one shuddering intake of the breath, life withered within her, light vanished without.

When ultimately, without knowing who she was; when, conscious only of an objective self struggling in darkness with the intangible and the void, when then life and light returned, she was on the floor, the monster peering at her.

They were not of much use, she found, though presently she could think more clearly, and in a little while she was considering the possibility that had loomed.

In certain conditions the soul gets used to monsters. It makes itself at home with what it must.

Her soul, she thought, might also. But even as she thought it, she knew she never could.

“Business! Business!” The girl repeated.

“You are so commercial just like all the nobility. If you were not a peer you would be mistaken for one. It’s quite painful.”

“That may b-be,” Buttercups spluttered. “But this idea of yours of going on the stage is quite as p-painful to me.”

Aurelia pecked at her food.

“One always feels quite safe with an imbecile, and that is so restful. Try it and see.”

“I’d like to try it with you.”

It is a business like another. But even to his nearest friends, to Tyszkiewicz, a compatriot, and Palencia, a Corsican, he did not boast of it. He had therefore some sense of shame, but not of honour, though with humour he was supplied.

A man with some sense of humour and no sense of honour may go far.

Barouffski intended to. After his volcanic introduction to Leilah, he beheld in her not the woman but the opportunity which chance had sent his way. To grasp that he displayed every art of which the Slav is capable. He did more.

Silverstairs, bored by the entertainment, anxious only to get away where he could have a quiet drink, tugged at his moustache and with unconscious reminiscence answered:

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t care what happens as long as it doesn’t happen to me.”

On the boards, fencing is an exercise, it is an amusement. On the field, it is another man’s blood—or yours.

Though, after all, one is rarely killed except by one’s seconds.

”

A little before she had thought herself the most miserable of beings. But however deep the hell, there is always a deeper one.

Add uncertainty to distress and the sum of it is sorrow multiplied by the infinite.

That hell, that sorrow was or seemed to be, hers. She did not know where to go, what to do, to whom to turn.

“God knows it would have been better. Anything would be better than that you should speak to me as you do.”

There is an innocence that appeals, a sincerity that disarms, a candour that outfaces every proof, and Verplank, who had been bent on overwhelming this woman with a contempt which he felt wholly deserved, was impressed, in spite of himself, by the evident ingenuousness, by the evident wretchedness, too, of her words.

“You say I would have made you tell me?”

“You know her manner”—a manner which Aurelia instantly made her own.

“My dear, matrimony is three months of adoration, three months of introspection, thirty years of toleration⁠—with the children to begin it all over.”

Buttercups frowned. “A rather voluminous definition.”

Aurelia, her eyes sparkling, her little white teeth visible, her little pink tongue also, looked about her, turned, went to the bench, got up on it and there, solemnly now as though on a platform, coughed.

“I said, that while from studies and statistics I was inclined to believe that, theoretically, love is a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination, actually it is the affection of somebody else.”

Blankly Buttercups stared. “I don’t understand that.”

Aurelia coughed again.

“I added that from the same studies and statistics I was also inclined to believe that love is the tragedy of those who lack it, the boredom of those who don’t.”

“Eh?” Buttercups whined. “I don’t understand that either.”

“Aurelia,” the poor devil pathetically interrupted, “you never say when we are married without adding if we ever are!”

“That’s to teach you not to take things for granted. I have been engaged before⁠—and may be again.”

“B-before!” the flustered Buttercups stuttered. “A-again!”

Again Barouffski glanced at the upper window. As he glanced he smiled.

“Cara mia, five may mean more things than you say, more even than you think.”

He was still smiling but it was not a pleasant smile to see.

“It is here.” In addition she felt—as in every spiritual crisis we all do—alone. Of this she could not tell Violet. She felt that she lacked the power to express it and that Violet lacked the ability to understand.

Pain has accents which only its graduates know.

Violet, in all her brilliant life, had never shed a poignant tear.

The danger with which he had to contend, Verplank did not personify or d’Arcy either, it was himself. When the golden six was tossed him, had he but then known how to secure the box, there would now be no danger at all.

But truth, when it does not console, confounds.

Barouffski put it from him. It was too exasperating. “Bah!” he told himself, “if her attitude does not change, a sojourn in the solitudes of Lithuania may alter it.” Angrily he nodded. Things more surprising have occurred there.

Fancy that! Afterward, in the account given to the press, the surgeon described the prick as an incisive wound in the hyoidian region, accompanied by a notable flow of blood. Anyone who did not know would have thought that Barouffski had been nearly done for.

But that’s a French duel for you⁠—a funeral at which everybody giggles.

”

Cogently Violet nodded. “Come to me then. Divorce is the mother-in-law of invention. If you haven’t any witnesses, I’ll find something else.

I make a specialty of finding things before they are lost.

”

Cogently Violet nodded. “Come to me then.

Divorce is the mother-in-law of invention.

If you haven’t any witnesses, I’ll find something else. I make a specialty of finding things before they are lost.”

“

Nobody has any manners anymore or, when they do, they have them in plenty and all of them bad.

”

“I! Merciful fathers! But I am not the world. No matter what is done in private, the world does not care.

The world is very well bred. It never sees anything that was not intended for it.

But on the open scandal of scandalous conduct instantly it turns its well bred back. It will turn it on you.”

“Never in the world!

A woman should never let herself go⁠—except in an aeroplane.

At a pinch a four-in-hand might do, but—”

“

Don’t be so ordinary as to ask a girl where she has been. If you are inquisitive, ask where she is going, and, if you ask me, I’ll tell you.

I am going to become—”

“She said: ‘And so you want my little boy for your husband.’ Partly that I told her, but partly also I want you for mother-in-law. You should have seen her lick her chops over that. Then she asked me about my affections.

I told her they were just like the fashions. They came and went.

”

“

Perfectly satisfactory. It appears that the poor boy can’t remember whether the charge is true or false and that I think is so dear of him.

”

Endearingly the ingénue smiled. “Something I ought not to hear, I suppose.” In speaking she made for the door. “

The amount of things I ought not to hear and do hear is simply amazing.

”

For I forgot that any sorrow should be welcomed. I forgot that it has been sent to make us nobler than we are. But my sorrows I have not welcomed. I have rebelled against them. I shall rebel no more.

They were my masters. They shall be my servants now.

”

“

If that is theosophy I will believe in it when I am old, fat and a German.

But I am glad it enabled you to reach a decision. Otherwise—”

Violet motioned at her. “Don’t be tiresome.

I may have lost the ability to be shocked but not the ability to be bored.

”

“

Do you know, I have always thought that constancy must be due either to a lack of imagination or else of opportunity.

That is what you would call a moral standpoint, isn’t it? Though what morality itself is you never deigned to explain. Personally I am inclined to think that it must be a preference in a choice of experiences.”

“Do you know, I have always thought that constancy must be due either to a lack of imagination or else of opportunity. That is what you would call a moral standpoint, isn’t it? Though what morality itself is you never deigned to explain.

Personally I am inclined to think that it must be a preference in a choice of experiences.

”

Enthusiastically the girl regarded her. “There! That’s it! You’ve struck it!

There is safety in numbers and what a moral young person I am!

”