Quotes from Winston Graham

Resentment and bitterness and old grudges were dead things, which rotted the hands that grasped them.

You must not face it. Because it is a – certainty it has to be forgotten. One cannot – must not – fear a certainty. All we know is this moment, and this moment, Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn't exist yet. That's tomorrow! It's only now that can ever be, at any one moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive – and together. We can't ask more. There isn't any more to ask.

I want the home about me: candles burning, curtains drawn, warmth, tea, friendship, love.

The French have a saying – is it the French? I don't know, I believe so – there is a saying that you do not put a boiling kettle upon the fire. You put cold water in the kettle and allow it to warm. So with marriage.

Not for the first time he was conscious of emotional lights and shades in his wife that could not be categorized, could not be named as sensuous or emotional as such, perhaps derived from each and gave to each but in essence grew out of a deeper fund of temperament that he still could not altogether apprehend. The simple miner's daughter was not simple in character at all.

however steady a man is, if he has an unstable wife to whom he is devoted, then there is a corrosion at work on his own foundations.

Perhaps you're right; we don't ever regain what we lightly lose.

An hour before dawn they went down to the cove, following the bubble of the stream and the descending combe, with a glowworm here and there green-lit like a jewel in the dark.

Did I behave myself tonight, Ross?' she asked. 'Did I behave as Mrs Poldark should behave?' 'You misbehaved monstrously,' he said, 'and were a triumph.

I'm afraid they would droop. See, they're drooping already. Bluebells are like that.

If every one of you was to clean before his own front door, all would be clean of cow flops.

Ill usage makes the sweetest of us vicious.

Everything at the moment, my dear, no doubt seems disgusting. I know the mood too well. But being in that mood, Ross, is like being out in the frost. If we do not keep on the move we shall perish.

The acme of futility was to regret a pleasure that was past, and he had no intention of doing so.

I've interrupted a party. Is it in celebration of the peace or in honor of the next war?

I mistrust folk who are always bringing God or Christ into their conversations. If it is not an actual blasphemy it is at least a presumption. It smacks of self-conceit, doesn't it?

through all the monotony and the splendor of life.

It is hopeless for older people to tell younger ones – particularly their own children – that they have been through the same thing. Such information is no use at all! It bounces off one's own grief – or jealousy or distress. If we are all born the same we are also all born unique – we all go through torments nobody else has ever had.

A vida é a mesma coisa que se ficar num hospício de loucos, pensei. Cada um vai circulando, imerso e afogado em suas próprias desilusões, sem que ninguém veja. A pessoa vai abrindo caminhos pelas celas, passando por entre os companheiros atormentados, rumo àquele que parece o único mentalmente são. Era exatamente o que eu estava fazendo agora.

Ross said: "I'll tell you what is best for the other man, always, and that's work. Work is a challenge. I've told you – I tried to drink myself out of my misery once. It didn't succeed. Only work did. It's the solvent to so much. Build yourself a wall, even if there's hell in your heart, and when it's done – even at the end of the first day – you feel better.

Tedn for we to be setting the world in step. Tedn sense, tedn natural, tedn right, tedn safe.

Otherwise," said Dr. Halse, "we will have you committed for contempt of court." Ross bowed slightly. "I can only assure you, sir, that such a committal would be a reading of my inmost thoughts.

He wondered if the real world was that one in which men fought for policies and principles and died or lived gloriously - or more often miserably - for the sake of an abstract word like patriotism or independence, or if reality belonged to the humble people and the common land.

Names are important. They have to be neither too ordinary nor too queer, just a name, like a face, that'll go along with the crowd.