Quotes from Deborah Moggach

Now he was fifty-six and the thought of getting to know a woman all over again filled him with a panic-stricken desolation.

For a man's greatest joy and comfort is a happy home, where he can close the door after his day's labours and find peace and solace beside the fireplace, enjoying the loving attentions of a blessed wife.

You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. And wish from this day forth never to be parted from you.

You may only call me "Mrs. Darcy"... when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.

Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright it is not the end.

The only real failure is the failure to try, and the measure of success is how we cope with disappointment.

But it's also true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes.

Remember you are everything, or you are nothing. If you are everything, then your heart is so big it can hold all of humanity within itself, you have no jealousy or narrowness. You are in the heart of every creature and every creature is in your heart. There is only bliss. Intro to Part 2, Chapter 4. Credit given to Swami Purna.

The world is chaotic. All artists know this, but they try to make sense of it. Sophia has made sense of it for him. She has stitched it together like the most beautiful cloak. Her love has sewn it together and they can wrap it around themselves and be safe from the world. Nobody can reach them.

Remove the Curtain of your Heart and see the Beloved sitting inside yourself. Close your Ears to the Outside and hear the Cosmic Sound going on within you. Intro to Part 2, Chapter 1. Credit given to Mira, poet-saint of Rajastan.

Your faith is like putty. How easily you mold it to your own desires.

Sophia will not come. How mad he is to imagine, for a moment, that she might. Why should she risk everything for him? He can offer her nothing, only love.

After the storm the city lies becalmed. It is a sunny morning, still and cold. Branches litter the streets like broken limbs. People clear away the wreckage. They swarm around like ants whose anthill has been scuffed; how doggedly they rebuild their lives.

I'm like a mussel, closed in my shell. It's only you who can open me.

Next to me she seems like a clean blackboard, whereas I am full of crossed-out scribbles that I can no longer decipher.

We use God to justify our actions when in fact it is our own instinct for survival that pushes us on.

Even when I succeed in getting there we only have an hour. At ten o'clock the night-watch trumpet sounds and those who are out return to bed. What a blameless, hardworking nation we are. In bed by ten, faithful husbands and faithful wives. It is no city for lovers, for those out late on the street are viewed with suspicion.

Art lies, to tell the truth. Flowers from different seasons bloom impossibly together. Trees are shifted around in the landscape to frame the composition. Rooms are created like stage sets, furnished with the artist's own possessions, where models are arranged in a speechless moment of drama.

Thou hast begot children not only for thy selfe, but also for thy countrie, which should not only bee to thy self a joy and pleasure,but also profitable and commodius afterwardes unto the common wealth. —BARTHOLOMEW BATTY, The Christian Man's Closet, 1581

The measure of our success is how we cope with disappointment.

Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you, as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you, as your shadow unshakeable. Sayings of the Buddha

Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or ill, his is a serene wisdom. Intro to Part 3, Chapter 1. Credit was given to The Bhagavad Gita.

It is a nice sunny day; his bunions have stopped hurting. There is always something to celebrate, in Gerrit's view.

Evelyn's New Age daughter will discover that a good shag beats hugging a guru any day." — Helen Falconer, book reviewer for The Guardian