The Wheel Of Fortune

Quotes

1. Ghosts, unshriven souls, psychological hang-ups — they all exist in the mind to put people through hell — they're just different ways [...] of looking at a given situation.

2. 

   'To be distracted is pardonable. To be incoherent is simply unobliging.'

3. 

   'I deserve to be thought a coward. I am a coward. I'm just so bloody afraid of dying — of losing —'

4. 

   Kester wrote about people and since human nature doesn't change his observations hadn't dated.

5. 

   'Bloody men! sometimes I feel I hate them all.'

6. 

   'Little girls don't stay playmates. Little girls become big girls and big girls become sweethearts.'

7. 

   Romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied, it anaesthesises them from the pain of their disordered second-rate lives [...] If romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied then surely nostalgia is the opiate of the disillusioned, for those who see all their dreams come true and find themselves living in a nightmare.

8. 

   'Friendship's best,' I said, 'and friendship's forever because no baby can come along to spoil it.'

9. 

   One must be rational about such matters and being rational need not mean being cold.

10. 

    Distrust grows out of lies. Wrong-doing grows out of distrust. Tragedy grows out of wrong-doing. But out of honesty grows love and love's so powerful, it'll be like a suit of armour, protecting Robert, protecting you.

11. 

    'Success on that scale don't make for happiness. Look at Asquith. Why does he drink? I wouldn't want you to end up a drunkard like that.'

12. 

    Christ, all you psychiatrists think about is sex — sex, sex, sex, sex, sex ...

13. 

    'Acquiring carnal knowledge is like swimming in the sea ... The sea's so beautiful to look at, so wonderful to swim in, but you must never bathe unless it's safe. People so often drown in the sea and some coasts are so very dangerous, ... like the Coast of Gower.'

14. 

    Redemption's just a word and as I'm not a Christian it means nothing to me.

15. 

    Man cannot live on charm alone, and an ambitious man cannot live on anything less than wealth, good social connections and substantial political influence.

16. 

    'I could always walk out on a husband. But I could never turn my back on a friend.'

17. 

    'There are standards of immorality as well as standards of morality, Robert. Make sure yours are high.'

18. 

    A rational disposition must necessarily preclude a romantic outlook in life, and only the failures of this world can afford to dispense with a rational disposition.

19. 

    'The English don't have opinions about the Irish. They have prejudices.'

20. 

    The one advantage of being childless is that one can choose one's children and so avoid the bizarre game of chance in which one passes one's best — or one's worst — genes to one's poor innocent offspring.

21. 

    What a bloody jungle income tax is! It's a wonder we don't all go on strike and refuse to pay.

22. 

    More tears. Disgraceful. I was getting just like Kester, weeping at the drop of a hat, but of course I was Kester. I'd become him, and now there was just this other stranger who wrote me debonair notes and who sounded just like me.

23. 

    Again, be patient. And have courage. Remember, everything passes, even the most unspeakable horrors.

24. 

    'He wasn't just being selfish, he was being realistic. Marriage would have been very difficult if not downright impossible.'

25. 

    'Barbarity's everywhere, that's the truth of it. Absolutely anyone is capable of absolutely anything.'

    'My dear Papa, I had no idea you were such a cynic!'

    'That's not cynicism, that's honesty — as you well know, dealing with criminals as you do, seeing the human race continually at its worst.'

26. 

    Every woman needs a special friend of her own sex with whom she can 'have a haircombing' about everything from menstruation to male monsters, and Julie had become that kind of special friend.

27. 

    Life's for living, not for mourning ... Live in the present, not the past.

28. 

    Recovering from an ill-starred romance is, after all, to anyone of sufficient will-power and self-respect, purely an attitude of mind.

29. 

    True doppelgängers should never meet face-to-face, you know.

30. 

    Sexual desire has to be dead as a doornail before a man and a woman can be genuinely at peace in a platonic relationship.

31. 

    '... we have to be kind, we have to be charitable and we can't condemn people just because they get in a mess...even the best people can get into ghastly messes,...we must never judge other people too harshly because although they can make awful mistakes they can still be very nice people.'

32. 

    Boredom on social occasions is an inescapable hazard for the over-educated, and for the over-ambitious it must be endured.

33. 

    'But never mind, all the best heroines are beautiful orphans, abandoned to their fate, and the one thing that's certain about my situation is that I'm going to be a heroine when I grow up.'

    'Can I be a hero?'

    'Well, I suppose you can try. But you'll have to try very hard.'

34. 

    Death had won my three friends; Death had almost won me. But now I was the one who was going to win and I was going to win by outwitting Death over and over again ... To compete with Death, as I had discovered in the mountains, was to know one was alive.

35. 

    But magic can't operate without a magician, and being a magician can beat a man to his knees.

That’s all the quotes.

35 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more