I know nothing – nothing in the world – of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone – horribly alone.
But always, at moments when his mind was like a blind octopus, squirming in an agony of knife-cuts, she would drop in that accusation.
All feminine claws, he said to himself, are sheathed in velvet; but they can hurt a good deal if they touch you on the sore places of the defects of your qualities–even merely with the velvet.
In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection.
But to betray her with battalion… That is against decency, against Nature…And for him, Christopher tietjens, to come down to the level of the men you met here!
Isn’t there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?
If you only would!” He added rather diffidently: “If you would not mind remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to report to the general if you say things dully and in the order that they happened.
It’s the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with you own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in harmony with Heaven.
He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse!
New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible – because it is large enough to be incurious.
You have to wait together – for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained … and exhausted. So that … That in effect was love.