Quotes from L.P. Hartley

To bleed from many wounds may be more serious than to bleed from one, but the pain, being less localized, is also easier for the mind to bear.

No little boy likes to be called a little man, but any little boy likes to be treated as a little man, and this is what Marian had done for me: at times, and when she had wanted to, she had endowed me with the importance of a grown-up; she had made me feel that she depended on me. She, more than anyone, had puffed me up.

I should not have cared to see it as an act of self-sacrifice even if it had been one; for there is nothing clever in self-sacrifice, nothing to pride oneself on.

His habitual mood was one of fearful joy contending with a ragged cloud of nervous apprehensions, and accompanying this was a train of extremely intense sensations proceeding from well-known sounds and sights and smells.

Suddenly I caught sight of myself in a glass and saw what a figure of fun I looked. Hitherto I had always taken my appearance for granted; now I saw how inelegant it was, compared with theirs; and at the same time, for the first time, I was acutely aware of social inferiority. I felt utterly out of place among these smart rich people, and a misfit everywhere.

That afternoon marked more than one change in Eustace's attitude towards life. Physical ugliness ceased to repel him and conversely physical beauty lost some of its appeal.

What did we talk about that has left me with an impression of wings and flashes, as of air displaced by the flight of a bird? Of swooping and soaring, of a faint iridescence subdued to the enfolding brightness of the day?

But she is very fond of you, anyone can see that."    "Oh yes, she is. They all are. But—I don't know how it is—if they see me really happy—for long together, I mean—they don't seem to like it."   

For a moment Eustace contemplated an existence spent in pleasing himself. How would he set about it? He had been told by precept, and had learned from experience, that the things he did to please himself usually ended in making other people grieved and angry, and were therefore wrong. Was he to spend his life in continuous wrong-doing, and in making other people cross? There would be no pleasure in that. Indeed what pleasure was there, except in living up to people's good opinion of him?

How terrifyingly efficient she sounds," said Stephen. "I think I should faint in her presence.

Indeed, Hilda was always putting her oar in, constituting herself the voice of conscience; she was a task-mistress, leading the chorus, undefined, unrecognised, but clearly felt, of those who thought he ought to try more, do more, be more, than he had it in him to try, or do, or be.

Nature meant his face to be expressive but he did not; for an expression is a give-away and he did not want to give anything away.

How little he knew about the rules of this world which he had crashed against so casually, like a moth bumping against a light!

Recognition of his own value, by himself and others, was of paramount importance to the car-hire driver.

She shook her head impatiently; the idea of being in competition with other unhappy people was distasteful to her. It was an argument that her friends sometimes used, very delicately of course—that other people had more reason for grief than she had. As if grief could be measured by its causes, and not by the victim's capacity for suffering!

Their conversations usually followed the same pattern: beginning with Lady Franklin and her obsession, they ended with Leadbitter and his fictitious home-life. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies; but Lady Franklin asked a great many questions and Leadbitter told her a great many lies.

Indeed, the life of facts proved no bad substitute for the facts of life.

It was delicious to be praised. A sense of luxury invaded Eustace's heart. Get on in the world...say nice things to people...he would remember that.

When I had got over the shock of this disclosure, which quite took away my powers of speech, my first impulse was to feel aggrieved. Why hadn't they told me? I might have made an even worse fool of myself. Then, with still greater force, it struck me that I ought to have known. It had been obvious from the start, too obvious. But I was like that. Two and two never made four for me, if I could make them five.

My father was, I suppose, a crank. He had a fine, precise mind which ignored what it was not interested in. Without being a misanthrope he was unsociable and non-conforming. He had his own unorthodox theories of education, one of which was that I should not be sent to school.

I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom, it was like a cricket match played in the drizzle, where everyone had an excuse - and what a dull excuse! - for playing badly. Life was meant to test a man, bring out his courage, initiative, resource; and I longed, I thought, to be tested: I did not want to fall on my knees and call myself a miserable sinner.

And I liked Ted Burgess in a reluctant, half-admiring, half-hating way. When I was away from him I could think of him objectively as a working farmer whom no one at the Hall thought much of. But when I was with him his mere physical presence cast a spell on me, it established an ascendancy which I could not break. He was, I felt, what a man ought to be, what I should like to be when I grew up.

Knowledge may be power, but it is not resilience, or resourcefulness, or adaptability to life, still less is it instinctive sympathy with human nature;

El pasado es un país extraño; allí hacen las cosas de manera muy diferente a como las hacemos aquí