Quotes from Elizabeth Taylor

Nearing fifty, Vinny felt more than ever the sweet disappointments only a romantic knows, whose very desires invite frustration; who loves twilight rather than midday, the echo more than the voice, the moon more than the sun, and women better than men;

Perhaps as a result of years with his mother, he was very prone to take things as a reproach.

There were no more long summers. The last was when she had played hide-and-seek with Vesey and the children. Since then the years had slipped by, each growing shorter than the one before. It had not seemed a long time, her married life. Summer and winter had run into one another. Betsy had not so much grown up as unrolled Ã¢â'¬â€œ as if she were all there at the beginning, but that each birthday unrolled more of her, made more visible, though suggesting more.

Winifred's, you know, where Ethel's girls were.' 'Yes, of course I know Miss Rogers,' he said. His dark hair receded from a forehead that seemed always moist, as were his dark and mournful eyes. As soon as they heard his voice – low, catarrhal and with such gentle inflections – some of the women, who had been sitting in a group by the window, got up and came over to him. 'Professor Rybeck,' one said. 'We are beside ourselves

In the mirror,' she thought, 'he sees something unreal - he sees the opinion of the world, is driven by fear of the world and judges me by the world's standards. But the world isn't real. It has no existence. Mr. Taylor is real - or was until this morning - and I am real, but what is Roddy? He is just a man looking into a mirror watching his own face growing angrier.

La señora Palfrey durmió plácidamente y toda la noche, con los labios ligeramente estirados, como si estuviese a punto de sonreír.

And perhaps those artful people in the Bible are right, and the only way to get happiness is not to think about it, or to think of other people having it instead, and so, fooling it, catch it at last in the nets of one's own indifference.

Or do Mafeking Night and the rest stand in the place of the secret and personal–in the place of what cannot be told and must perish with us–moments when for no reason that we can understand–a warm evening, the scent of leaves, a cock crowing far away–all the air becomes distended with grief. A moment such as this.

Jewellery has the power to be the one little thing that makes you feel unique.

Jealousy is the most absurd pain of all. How one resents it! To be made to suffer in public–the public indignity, the private pain. The shock of it lays dreadful waste in one's soul; it discolors the whole world, cancels every remembrance of tenderness.

We are complete in the womb itself, she thought in terror. We only unfold.

Poor Lou, I did nothing for her,' Kate suddenly thought. It is a most severe pain—the realisation that one has failed one's child, done less than one might have done; but she continued to smile bravely.

I cannot think why you love me,' he said, as all lovers say; but with more anxiety in his voice than is usual. 'Oh, I am nothing without you,' she said. 'I should not know what to be. I feel as if you had invented me. I watch you inventing me, week after week

Sé que nunca me harías esperar, a menos que tuvieras una buena razón para hacerlo. Te esperaría pacientemente, para que pudiéramos disfrutar el resto de la velada. –No, la pregunta no se refiere solo a mí –dijo él–. Puede ser cualquier otra persona. –No hay otra persona –dijo ella–. No se me ocurre nadie más.

El tiempo pasaba. Era un hecho nada difícil de probar llegado el caso, aunque sucedían muy pocas cosas.

They are the hands he started out with,' she suddenly thought. 'Like all of us. Our faces, our bodies change, our manners, our hearts, but not our hands.

Mrs. Post had lain quietly down and switched off the bedside lamp. Her head was like a magic lantern into which slides were thrust noisily, one after the other.

If you don't praise people just sometimes a little early on they die of despair, or turn into Hitlers, you know?

Sometimes, she wanted quite furiously to hurt him; now, for instance, to lean forward and snap at him: 'Why do you dye your hair? I know you do. In this light it looks utterly horrible.

In its gilded pagoda, the band was playing. The conductor – a small bent man with a waxed moustache – looked as if he were whipping up a pudding with his baton.

Abrió el libro, pero ninguna página parecía ser lo bastante potente para borrar la soledad que sentía.

We can all remember saying something inadequate in a crisis or even, the more unbalanced of us, giggling at the news of death.

Durante años vivimos al galope —dijo Frances— y de pronto las dudas nos asaltan, el paisaje se ensombrece, nos sentimos perdidas y solas, y repentinamente tomamos conciencia de que tendremos que seguir avanzando a tientas porque ya no podemos volver sobre nuestros propios pasos.

To avoid hurting people needs constant vigilance. As one grows older one is less and less equal to the task. There are so many cruelties of omission.