Women quotes

he is riding along the forest pathway, and I hope he may miss me, hidden here among the pines. And yet I am not unaware that, should he ride past and not discover me, I should feel disappointed. Notwithstanding, I make no movement.

The only deceit I care to shun is self-deceit.

Janusz, who has seen me afar amongst the birches and the pines, urges his horse forward, and approaches behind me, so that I cannot catch sight of him.

The flies in the wood torment it so much that presently it is unable to restrain itself, and frets forward a few paces, to my side.

And so I can see Janusz. A handsome man, in a light-coloured jockey’s cap, tight-fitting trousers, and long patent leather boots; just now so vexed that his nostrils are quivering.

Bowing stiffly, he takes his right foot out of the stirrup, and prepares to dismount.

There is a touch of self-satisfaction in his voice as he says this. It was then a mistake of mine to have supposed him unaware of the nature of his strength.

Knowledge of one’s strong points makes for happiness; he is enviable.

Now he takes up some pine-cones, with which he pelts his horse playfully. It begins to kick and stamp. Instead of teasing the poor brute to no purpose, he ought (I say) to take one of the trees for his mark;

I want to live my woman’s life … nothing more. Until, perhaps. …

Oh, how hard it is for a girl to bear, upon her white and shapely shoulders, the awful burden of conscious humanity!

At times, Janusz is as gentle as a tame young wolf, and that ravenous look has faded from his eyes. Then I permit him to kiss my hands and lay them to his sunburnt cheeks.

All around is dead: no life anywhere. Nothing remains but my loneliness—the unbounded loneliness of my strength, self-centred and unparalleled.

Never yet have I felt my power so strongly, and never yet has it made me so sad.

The black sky bends its lowering vault above me; under its clouds the black pond lifts up swelling waves. Between the Infinite and my soul, there is nowhere any room for strength.

it is scrutinized and judged by me, as though I were someone else. For me, there is no present; I look at all things from out of the Future: there are no involuntary bursts of thought, no inarticulate words or mechanical gestures for me.

And should I try to behave with apparent artlessness, I should then be artificial twice over.

This afternoon a carriage, covered with mud, and drawn by a couple of splendid sorrel horses, pulls up in front of our terrace. Imszanski jumps out, throwing the reins to the groom, who sits behind. Janusz welcomes him, and he slowly comes up the steps.

Those tight trousers, those raw leather boots of his—I hate them, and scorn myself for having let that sort of thing ever make any impression on me; assuredly there is nothing in all this that is worthy of scorn.

Autumn has come. That is all.

We come abreast upon the muddy highway, all three strangely sick at heart. In silence we ride on.

Strange creatures they are! Take Martha’s case: purity! why, she was raving about it.

Nothing should stand in my way, if I loved; and therefore no doubt I cannot meet with love anywhere.

I often call upon Obojanski now, in the dim semiconscious hope that I may meet him there. And each of my visits is only a fresh disappointment.

“

Vanity is nothing but the aesthetic feeling in its maturity.

Undoubtedly it contains an element of coquetry, but the latter has its source in the reproductive instinct.” This I say, seriously, but speaking quickly, to hide what I feel;

This I should not like. Not because it would show my character in an ignoble light. That’s nonsense. No, but it would mark how little I care for the creature I could take on such terms.

I am of those whose sin is greater than the sin of Eve and Adam: I have eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.

Yes, for I have gone on—on to the very end. Everyone has something he can call his own. Sufferers magnify in their mind the power of suffering; those who have abandoned everything make a god of their strength of will to do so.

Now—now I understand—and I almost feel hatred for the man.

Yes, I may throw myself under the wheels of a locomotive, but never will I say I do that out of love for it!

“Reasonable people should remember that ‘the heart is no servant,’ and that, beyond intellectual and conscious resolve, we can find nothing on which we can safely count.”

Such a No as does not contradict Yes, but means what No means, taken together with Yes.

Such a No as Roslawski said to me.

And if I suffer nothing, it is because I belong to a world wherein joy and sorrow are the same.

“

I have a great liking for misdeeds, but not when committed by professional criminals.

”

Madame Wildenhoff does not belong to the class of women that Martha was speaking of. I think that, were it not for her intrigue with Imszanski, even Martha herself might acknowledge her as a “complete woman.”

One may, however, be a complete woman, and yet not a complete human being.

We are not yet in the habit of distinguishing these two ideas, as we distinguish between “human being” and “man.”

Here she bent aside toward her husband’s chair, and said to him in an affectionate and audible whisper:

“But we are a pattern couple, are we not?”

This time, Imszanski went home with me. I overheard Czolhanski say, on taking leave of him: “You may rely upon me absolutely; I will manage everything.”

“And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don’t know. Perhaps to no one.

When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me.

”

“I love, I love, and without any return!—Oh, how unlike me, is it not?”

Whereupon she laughed hysterically, and then shed tears, tearing at her handkerchief with her teeth.

She was waiting for me to put her some questions, that she might be able to confide her sorrows to me. I thought I should soon be likely to go mad.

He is always like that.

My looks set us apart, his kisses unite us together.

But I am wrestling, held in the grip of my love, as a kite that soars above the clouds wrestles with the string held by a boy at play!

And yet I know—I know!—that this is not happiness: that this romantic adventure of mine will have no morrow.

Put an end to it? I cannot; for just now the man is as necessary to me as the air I breathe.

But some time or other I shall not love him any more; and then I shall hold it as a sacred duty to pay him for his deeds in the past by my future conduct.

Put an end to it? I cannot; for just now the man is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. But some time or other

I shall not love him any more; and then I shall hold it as a sacred duty to pay him for his deeds in the past by my future conduct.

And she, this my poor love! stands here, gazing with eyes full of frantic terror at her end, that will and must come some day!

“

Love my snows: for there are volcanoes seething beneath them.

”

My eyelids closed, my lips parted; I was about to faint. And I felt his mouth upon mine, and it was most sweet, with the savour of withered roses.

And I drank of the crimson wine of his kisses, and it was strong as death.

And the crimson wine inebriated me.

He has excused himself; has assured me, even sworn that I am in error. I have refused to believe him.

Women are hugely credulous, credulous in the extreme.

I have not seen him this whole week. He came here twice, but was denied entrance, as I ordered. I don’t care for the forgiving system. I don’t care to become like Martha. …

“We take everything so very seriously, so very much au tragique,” she says. “And that, you see, puts us more in their power. We should analyse things less, and learn rather to glide over them.

Analysis is a two-edged weapon: it easily turns and wounds you.

Do endeavour to pass along with a cursory look about you, even with half-closed eyes; things will seem different at once. Don’t cry any more: and if he should come, the servant is to let him in, is she not?”

“Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille!” Yes, but—is it “assouvie”? Well, I am rather tired, not only of love, but of the whole atmosphere I am living in.

In truth, disdain of all things is best of all. Yet again, disdain itself would be one of the things to be disdained!

I am curiously entangled at present, and can scarcely recognize myself as “Her of the Ice-Plains.” In this continual struggle with myself, my strength has been exhausted.

of my atavistic tendencies, which it is a finer and more momentous work to unearth and to note down than to put into practice.

I am proud of the eternal Becoming, teeming with riches, dazzling with the wildest hues, deafening with harsh discordancies, rushing on, moving hither and thither, turning in spiral ascension, or even spinning round.

Yes, I am proud that this Becoming still goes on. I prefer a hundred times the ‘Transitional Woman’ to the ‘Woman of the Future’: for she who is transitional promises ever so much more than the other, when perfect, can fulfil.

I am proud of the eternal Becoming, teeming with riches, dazzling with the wildest hues, deafening with harsh discordancies, rushing on, moving hither and thither, turning in spiral ascension, or even spinning round. Yes, I am proud that this Becoming still goes on.

I prefer a hundred times the ‘Transitional Woman’ to the ‘Woman of the Future’: for she who is transitional promises ever so much more than the other, when perfect, can fulfil.

“Neither you,” I said, turning to Gina, “with your quasi-Pantheistic theory of love; nor Madame Wildenhoff, with her volatile and almost manlike eroticism; nor Idalia, nor Martha—none of you is, any more than I am, a woman of the future;

Martha could forget herself for my sake; you never could. A bundle of theories, of sentimental scepticism, of self-assurance: that’s what you are!

A poor frightened bird always popping its head under its wing!

”

I smiled at him once more, saying: “

Whether I believe or not, matters little. What matters is that you certainly do!

”

“All the same,” I whispered to myself, “the thing is done at last!”

Today I feel I have crossed the Rubicon, and am standing on the farther shore, not very sure whether things are better with me now.

And yet, I should not wish to go back again.

But that is nothing. No, nothing, I swear!

Often and often the monument over a sepulchre may turn into a gate that leads to a new life.

Smilowicz has come to see me.

“You know how ill I am. That is what makes me so hateful.

Not that I regret life, but that I have nothing in life to regret losing.

”