Quotes from Glenway Wescott

What he minded was her general resentfulness and permanent mistrustfulness, now that things were going better.

To be German is simply the way we live; it is a love of government and orderliness, for one thing, and confidence in ourselves and in each other.

Also it is good to tell my trouble. It relieves my thinking about it, it passes the time, the deadly time.

He found himself falsely thinking that one could scarcely begrudge these people the mastery of the world; if they wanted it enough to pay the same price they exacted of others; if they were willing to bring the common suffering and irreparable loss upon themselves as everyone else.

Until that moment it had never seriously occurred to him that they were susceptible to the common suffering.

But, she fancied, she would not be able to be really unintelligent again, not even if she tried; so much having happened to her.

It was a good thing; and to admit that a good thing has derived from an evil thing is to bend the knee to evil to some extent.

The look he gave Helianos was one of perfect candor, a little unsure of himself, a little sentimental, seeming to hope that kindness would be repaid with kindness.

It was an event in his soul.

If you forgive more than you can afford, you may find yourself impoverished in emotion afterward, with a lowered resistance to whatever happens after that.

Killing aroused anger, sometimes caused despair, sometimes gave hope. This was death the charmer, the changer; a continuous factor in one's life, to which one yielded.