Where Angels Fear to Tread quotes

See the little towns—Gubbio, Pienza, Cortona, San Gemignano, Monteriano. And don’t, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art.

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.

”

He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half-attractive, half-repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.

Mrs. Herriton did not believe in romance nor in transfiguration, nor in parallels from history, nor in anything else that may disturb domestic life.

She adroitly changed the subject before Philip got excited. Soon Harriet returned, having given her lesson in geography. Irma went to bed early, and was tucked up by her grandmother. Then the two ladies worked and played cards. Philip read a book.

She learnt to bicycle, for the purpose of waking the place up, and coasted down the High Street one Sunday evening, falling off at the turn by the church.

If she had not been a relative, it would have been entertaining.

But even Philip, who in theory loved outraging English conventions, rose to the occasion, and gave her a talking which she remembered to her dying day. It was just then, too, that they discovered that she still allowed Mr.

It is not only so quaint, but one sees the Italians unspoiled in all their simplicity and charm here. The frescoes are wonderful. Caroline, who grows sweeter every day, is very busy sketching.’ ”

“Everyone to his taste!” said Harriet, who always delivered a platitude as if it was an epigram.

She was curiously virulent about Italy, which she had never visited, her only experience of the Continent being an occasional six weeks in the Protestant parts of Switzerland.

“Oh, Harriet is a bad lot!” said Philip as soon as she left the room. His mother laughed, and told him not to be naughty; and the appearance of Irma, just off to school, prevented further discussion.

Not only in Tracts is a child a peacemaker.

“One moment, Irma,” said her uncle. “I’m going to the station. I’ll give you the pleasure of my company.”

they are the greatest fun,” said Mrs. Herriton, who had the gift of making work a treat. She and her elderly daughter always got on very well, though they had not a great deal in common. Harriet’s education had been almost too successful.

As Philip once said, she had “bolted all the cardinal virtues and couldn’t digest them.”

Though pious and patriotic, and a great moral asset for the house, she lacked that pliancy and tact which her mother so much valued, and had expected her to pick up for herself.

It was not so very far from Siena, which she had learnt at school. Past it there wandered a thin black line, notched at intervals like a saw, and she knew that this was a railway.

But the map left a good deal to imagination, and she had not got any.

She looked up the place in Childe Harold, but Byron had not been there. Nor did Mark Twain visit it in the Tramp Abroad. The resources of literature were exhausted: she must wait till Philip came home.

She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she could not give satisfaction—she had better leave.

A small thing at hand is greater than a great thing remote, and Lilia, misconducting herself upon a mountain in Central Italy, was immediately hidden.

Mrs. Herriton flew to a registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came home, was told by the housemaid that things seemed so unsettled that she had better leave as well;

He must take what is suitably termed a legno—a piece of wood—and drive up eight miles of excellent road into the middle ages.

For it is impossible, as well as sacrilegious, to be as quick as Baedeker.

It was three in the afternoon when Philip left the realms of common sense. He was so weary with travelling that he had fallen asleep in the train.

At that moment the carriage entered a little wood, which lay brown and sombre across the cultivated hill.

The trees of the wood were small and leafless, but noticeable for this⁠—that their stems stood in violets as rocks stand in the summer sea.

There are such violets in England, but not so many. Nor are there so many in Art, for no painter has the courage. The cart ruts were channels, the hollow lagoons;

He thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that Romance might die.

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us.

But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better. It was going from Philip now, and therefore he gave the cry of pain.

But if he sounds like something heavy, such as a log of wood, or a piece of meat, or a visitor, he is interrogated, and then bidden or forbidden to ascend.

The ground floor and the upper floor of that battered house are alike deserted, and the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying body all life retires to the heart.

There is a door at the top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold.

Lilia gathered somehow from this conversation that Continental society was not the go-as-you-please thing she had expected. Indeed she could not see where Continental society was.

Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man.

There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism—that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.

Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism—that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.

In the democracy of the caffè or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality.

But is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women.

“He does deserve her,” said all the men.

It is a marvellous land, where you love it or hate it.

There were no letters, and of course they sat down at the Caffè Garibaldi, by the Collegiate Church—quite a good caffè that for so small a city.

“I do not accept small sums now. It is not worth the risk. But the German was another matter. But listen, my Gino, for I am older than you and more full of experience.

The person who understands us at first sight, who never irritates us, who never bores, to whom we can pour forth every thought and wish, not only in speech but in silence⁠—that is what I mean by simpatico.

”

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say “yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”

At no one moment did Lilia realize that her marriage was a failure; yet during the summer and autumn she became as unhappy as it was possible for her nature to be. She had no unkind treatment, and few unkind words, from her husband.

She did not hate him, even as she had never loved him; with her it was only when she was excited that the semblance of either passion arose. People said she was headstrong, but really her weak brain left her cold.

Suffering, however, is more independent of temperament, and the wisest of women could hardly have suffered more.

As for Gino, he was quite as boyish as ever, and carried his iniquities like a feather. A favourite speech of his was, “Ah, one ought to marry! Spiridione is wrong; I must persuade him.

She did not call any more, for she felt very ill, and fainted; and when she revived she was lying in the road, with dust in her eyes, and dust in her mouth, and dust down her ears.

There is something very terrible in dust at nighttime.

“What shall I do?” she moaned. “He will be so angry.”

Spiridione was told, and replied in a philosophical but not very helpful letter. His other great friend, whom he trusted more, was still serving in Eritrea or some other desolate outpost. And, besides, what was the good of letters?

Friends cannot travel through the post.

Lilia, so similar to her husband in many ways, yearned for comfort and sympathy too.

He came back with the air of a prophet who would either remodel Sawston or reject it.

All the energies and enthusiasms of a rather friendless life had passed into the championship of beauty.

In a short time it was over. Nothing had happened either in Sawston or within himself. He had shocked half a dozen people, squabbled with his sister, and bickered with his mother.

In a short time it was over. Nothing had happened either in Sawston or within himself. He had shocked half a dozen people, squabbled with his sister, and bickered with his mother.

He concluded that nothing could happen, not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes conquer where love of beauty fails.

A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically intact, he resumed his placid life, relying more and more on his second gift, the gift of humour.

She looks on it as a long visit. And it is important, most important, that she should not receive a shock. All a child’s life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes—morals, behaviour, everything.

Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.

That is why I have been so careful about talking of poor Lilia before her.”

“Petty unselfishness,” she repeated. “

I had got an idea that everyone here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they didn’t care for, to please people they didn’t love; that they never learnt to be sincere⁠—and, what’s as bad, never learnt how to enjoy themselves.

That’s what I thought—what I thought at Monteriano.”

“it isn’t nonsense, and a year or two ago I should have been saying it too. But I feel differently now, and I hope that you also will change. Society is invincible—to a certain degree.

But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it.

There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity—nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you.”

“I have never had that experience yet.

Surely I and my life must be where I live.

”

These would be wonderful. Harriet, worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss Abbott; Gino, worked by a cheque—what better entertainment could he desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour.

He might be a puppet’s puppet, but he knew exactly the disposition of the strings.

They travelled for thirteen hours downhill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful.

Italy was beastly, and Florence station is the centre of beastly Italy. But he had a strange feeling that he was to blame for it all; that a little influx into him of virtue would make the whole land not beastly but amusing.

For there was enchantment, he was sure of that; solid enchantment, which lay behind the porters and the screaming and the dust.

He could see it in the terrific blue sky beneath which they travelled, in the whitened plain which gripped life tighter than a frost, in the exhausted reaches of the Arno, in the ruins of brown castles which stood quivering upon the hills.

Philip found a certain grace and lightness in his companion which he had never noticed in England. She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm. He did not suspect that he was more graceful too.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

Citizens came out for a little stroll before dinner. Some of them stood and gazed at the advertisements on the tower.

“Why, yes. These people know how to live.

They would sooner have a thing bad than not have it at all.

That is why they have got to have so much that is good. However bad the performance is tonight, it will be alive. Italians don’t love music silently, like the beastly Germans. The audience takes its share—sometimes more.”

So rich and so appalling was the effect, that Philip could scarcely suppress a cry.

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy; it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany.

It observes beauty, and chooses to pass it by. But it attains to beauty’s confidence.

A coon song lay open on the piano, and of the two tables one supported Baedeker’s Central Italy, the other Harriet’s inlaid box. And over everything there lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off one moment to thicken on another.

It is well to be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely.

But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.

And over everything there lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off one moment to thicken on another. It is well to be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely.

But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.

Miss Abbott did not sit down, partly because the antimacassars might harbour fleas, partly because she had suddenly felt faint, and was glad to cling onto the funnel of the stove. She struggled with herself, for she had need to be very calm;

He padded upstairs, and looked in at the open door of the reception room without seeing her. Her heart leapt and her throat was dry when he turned away and passed, still singing, into the room opposite.

It is alarming not to be seen.

He had left the door of this room open, and she could see into it, right across the landing. It was in a shocking mess. Food, bedclothes, patent-leather boots, dirty plates, and knives lay strewn over a large table and on the floor.

He, too, was frightened, and perspiration came starting through the tan.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

“Business—” she said at last.

“What a fine child, Signor Carella. And how nice of you to talk to it. Though I see that the ungrateful little fellow is asleep! Seven months? No, eight; of course eight. Still, he is a remarkably fine child for his age.”

Italian is a bad medium for condescension.

The patronizing words came out gracious and sincere, and he smiled with pleasure.

It was her duty to rescue the baby, to save it from contagion, and she still meant to do her duty. But the comfortable sense of virtue left her.

She was in the presence of something greater than right or wrong.

Forgetting that this was an interview, he had strolled back into the room, driven by the instinct she had aroused in him. “Wake up!” he cried to his baby, as if it was some grown-up friend.

She was silent. This cruel, vicious fellow knew of strange refinements.

The horrible truth, that wicked people are capable of love, stood naked before her, and her moral being was abashed.

It was her duty to rescue the baby, to save it from contagion, and she still meant to do her duty. But the comfortable sense of virtue left her. She was in the presence of something greater than right or wrong.

She turned away her head when Gino lifted his son to his lips. This was something too remote from the prettiness of the nursery. The man was majestic; he was a part of Nature; in no ordinary love scene could he ever be so great.

For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and⁠—by some sad, strange irony⁠—it does not bind us children to our parents.

For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.

“It is very kind of you,” he murmured, “especially in your beautiful dress. He is nearly clean already. Why, I take the whole morning!

There is so much more of a baby than one expects.

And Perfetta washes him just as she washes clothes. Then he screams for hours. My wife is to have a light hand. Ah, how he kicks! Has he splashed you? I am very sorry.”

It’s not enough to see clearly; I’m muddleheaded and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time. And you—your brain and your insight are splendid.

But when you see what’s right you’re too idle to do it.

You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish—not sit intending on a chair.”

“None at all. Fight as if you think us wrong.

Oh, what’s the use of your fair-mindedness if you never decide for yourself?

Anyone gets hold of you and makes you do what they want. And you see through them and laugh at them—and do it. It’s not enough to see clearly;

And you—your brain and your insight are splendid. But when you see what’s right you’re too idle to do it. You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark.

But we must intend to accomplish⁠—not sit intending on a chair.

”

I’m one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia’s marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an ‘honourable failure.’

I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed.

You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now—I don’t suppose I shall ever meet anything greater.

I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now—I don’t suppose I shall ever meet anything greater.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it⁠—and I’m sure I can’t tell you whether the fate’s good or evil.

I don’t die—I don’t fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I’m just not there. You are quite right;

I feel you ought to fight it out with Harriet. Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that ‘nothing hangs on it,’ it sounds like blasphemy.

There’s never any knowing⁠—(how am I to put it?)⁠—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it forever.

”

So the two young men parted with a good deal of genuine affection. For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good.

Or⁠—to put the thing less cynically⁠—we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice.

Philip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind.

So the two young men parted with a good deal of genuine affection.

For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good.

Or—to put the thing less cynically—we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice. Philip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind.

Her eyes were open, full of infinite pity and full of majesty, as if they discerned the boundaries of sorrow, and saw unimaginable tracts beyond. Such eyes he had seen in great pictures but never in a mortal.

Her hands were folded round the sufferer, stroking him lightly, for even a goddess can do no more than that.

And it seemed fitting, too, that she should bend her head and touch his forehead with her lips.

“Well, I don’t. And I don’t understand you,” he murmured to himself, as he paced away from her up the corridor.

By this time he loved her very much, and he could not bear to be puzzled.

He had reached love by the spiritual path: her thoughts and her goodness and her nobility had moved him first, and now her whole body and all its gestures had become transfigured by them.

“Well, I don’t. And I don’t understand you,” he murmured to himself, as he paced away from her up the corridor. By this time he loved her very much, and he could not bear to be puzzled.

He had reached love by the spiritual path: her thoughts and her goodness and her nobility had moved him first, and now her whole body and all its gestures had become transfigured by them.

The beauties that are called obvious—the beauties of her hair and her voice and her limbs—he had noticed these last; Gino, who never traversed any path at all, had commended them dispassionately to his friend.