The Nature of a Crime quotes

And all sorts of mists hurried past him. It was just outside the Natural History Museum. He said that his Seaford Railway Bill would come before Committee in June. And I wondered: what is June? … I laughed and thought: why June will never come!

June will never come. Imagine that for a moment.

We have discussed the ethics of suicide. You see why June will never come!

It was that note of universal negation contained within the glass film of the ring. It is not you who brought the ring into my life: I had it made years ago.

It was in my nature always to anticipate a touch on my shoulder, to which the only answer could be an act of defiance.

And the ring is my weapon. I shall raise it to my teeth, bite through the glass: inside there is poison.

And I have been envied for my gifts, for my talents, for my wealth, for my official position, for the letters after my name, for my great and empty house, for my taste in pictures—for my … for my opportunities.

Great criminals and the very patient learn one common lesson: Believe in nothing, be harsh to no one!

But you cannot understand how immensely leisurely I feel. It is one o’clock at night. I cannot possibly be arrested before eleven tomorrow morning. I have ten hours in which, without the shadow of a doubt, I can write to you:

Men have been nerved to crime for the sake of a love that was theirs.

The call of every great passion is to unlawfulness.

But your love was not mine, and my love for you was vitiated by that conventional reverence which, as to nine parts in ten, is genuine, but as to the last tenth a solemn sham behind which hide all the timidities of a humanity no …

The stress of every secret emotion makes for sincerity in the end.

Silence is like a dam. When the flood is at its highest the dam gives way.

I am not conceited enough to think that I can sweep you along, terrified, in the rush of my confidences. I have not the elemental force.

So that these late hours have been, as it were, the prerogative of the mouse. No. I shall not get a cat. To that extent I am still a part of the world:

I am master of the fate of mice!

) I have, then, ten hours, less the time it has taken me to chronicle the mouse, in which to talk to you.

My dear one, you cannot imagine how I feel towards him: a little like a deity, a little like an avenging Providence. I imagine that the real Deity must feel towards some of His worshippers much as I feel towards this phoenix of the divines.

The Deity is after all the supreme Artist⁠—and the supreme quality of Art is surprise.

Imagine then the feeling of the Deity towards some of those who most confidently enter His temple. Just imagine His attitude towards those who deal in the obvious platitudes that “honesty is the best policy,” or “genius the capacity for taking pains.”

You know, positively he said that at the very moment of his “fall” he had thought of what I should think of him. And I said:

“My good Edward, you are the most debauched person I have ever met.”

His face fell, his soft lips dropped right down into a horseshoe. He had come to me as one of those bland optimists would go to his deity. He expected to be able to say:

They prefer, that is to say, to be rendered the mere presiding geniuses of well-loaded boards.

It is better to be a lady⁠—which you will remember philologically means a “loaf-cutter”⁠—than to be an Ideal.

And in this they are obviously wrong.

Certainly, I know, if I were a woman which of the two types of men I would choose. Upon the lowest basis it is better for all purposes of human contracts to be married to a good liar than to a bad one.

For a lie is a figurative truth⁠—and it is the poet who is the master of these illusions.

Even in the matter of marital relations it is probable that the poet is as faithful as the Edward Burdens of this world—only the Edward Burdens are more skilful at concealing from the rest of the world their pleasant vices.

Not to everyone is given that depth of feeling, that faculty of absolute trust which will not be deceived, and the exulting masterfulness of the senses which are the mark of a fearless lover.

Fearless lovers are rare, if obstinate, and sensual fools are countless as grains of sand by the seashore.

I can imagine that correct young man perfectly capable of setting himself deliberately to worry a distracted girl into surrender.

The worst that Death can do to me is to deliver me up forever to unsatisfied longings for you.

Well, that is all that Life has done, that is all that Life can do, for me.

But Life can do so much more that is worse. Believe me when I say that I dread imprisonment—and believe me when I say that I do not dread disgrace.

“A long sentence.” For that would mean my being delivered up for a long time—forever—to you. I write “forever” advisedly and after reflection, since a long subjection, without relief, to that strain would leave upon my brain a wound that must prove ineffaceable.

For to be alone and to think⁠—those are my terrors.

One reads that men who have been condemned for long years to solitary imprisonment go mad. But I think that even that sad gift from Omnipotent Fate would not be mine.

But that alone would hardly be satisfactory: a comparatively involuntary cure is of little value in comparison with an effort of the will.

You may, conceivably, expel nature with a fork, but nothing but a passion will expel a passion.

The only point to be proved is whether there exists in your husband any other passion for the sake of which he might abandon his passion for the clearness of vision which he always says his chloral gives him.

I watched a milkman go up some doorsteps to put a can of milk beside a boot-scraper and I was wonderfully interested to see a black cat follow him.

They were the clearest moments I have ever spent upon the earth⁠—those when I was dead.

They were so clear because nothing else weighed on my attention but just those little things. It was an extraordinary, a luxuriant feeling. That, I imagine, must have been how Adam and Eve felt before they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge.

… so strong within me was the feeling that it was only a mental phenomenon, a thing that had no relation with me—the feeling of finality was so strong upon me that I actually found myself sitting in that chair before I realized what had occurred.

What had occurred was that I had become utterly and for good your property.

In that sense only am I reprieved. As far as Edward Burden is concerned I am entirely saved. I stand before you and ask you to turn your thumb up or down.