Quotes from Glenway Wescott

But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats. For they would surely kill us.

Time is the nervous system of narration, whether factual or fictive. If it gets confused some of the minutiae of human nature are certain not to work, not to glow, not to strike home.

It is not love, but lack of love which is blind.

Life goes on and on after one's luck has run out. Youthfulness persists, alas, long after one has ceased to be young.

But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats. For they would surely kill us.

People as a rule do mean much more than they understand.

The boy thought, How powerful a story is, and how by a kind of magic it compels the imagination; there was nothing in the world, it seemed to him, so mysteriously strong; and he began to wonder if he would ever have anything as beautiful to tell.

Back you fly to your perch, ashamed as well as frustrated. Life is almost all perch. There is no nest; and no one is with you, on exactly the same rock or out on the same limb. The circumstances of passion are all too petty to be companionable.

As a flying seed will debauch a whole meadow with flowers, one kiss, one caress not even wished for, had spoiled her peace of mind, even her good health.

During their last years it was as if they lay on one deathbed — the dying hands interlaced by habit, by hatred of each other and love of God, the dying mouths murmuring truths without pity and complaining still.

La juventud persiste hasta mucho después de que uno ha dejado de ser joven. El amor por la vida permanece indefinidamente, con menos probabilidad de ser amado, menos habilidad de amar, y con el aguijón de la pasión tan acuciante como siempre. El solterón envejecido no es tan distinto de un viejo halcón.

However, because death is the only absolute equality among human beings on earth, even the ignoblest and the most welcome instance of it deserves a little ceremonious thought.

He thought himself stupid; the contemplation of grief always makes one stupid.

She liked to be near him now that she had thought of a way to prove to him that life had taught her to understand and love him.

All the disappointments of our life before the war were a fool's paradise.

The look in his eyes although it was only hatred was beautiful, like a flower upheld on a bent, spindling, breaking stem.

In marriage, insult arises again and again; and pain has to be not only endured, but consented to; and the amount of forgiveness that it necessitates is incredible and exhausting.

It is never too late for a little happiness even in the shadow of death;

Naturally they were not a happy family, but they had good hearts, and did their best to console each other in bereavement and impoverishment.

Hugo, child, have I ever said that I loved you? Do you know that your fists are clenched? You aren't going to strike me-' She had smiled. Then he had burst into tears. He had never mentioned love either, but it had not occurred to him that it might not be identical with what they had enjoyed.

What sickened her was her own hatred, and weariness of being dominated and reminded and misled and disgusted and made a fool of by hatred.

She only knew that there was something she did not know.

Helianos wanted to accept everything as it appeared on the surface; at least to interpret everything as favorably as he could, as mere kindliness, a wonderful improvement and a great blessing.

He was a naturally pacific, sociable man; he liked to think well of his fellow men, even an occupying German officer.