Elsinore Books > Quotes

“as Pushkin says: “‘Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts Than hosts of baser truths.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple. And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the sky.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“For the last two days the crew had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had very little sleep. I felt painfully that I—a stranger—was doing something unusual when I directed him to let all hands turn in without setting an anchor watch. I proposed to keep on deck myself till one o’clock or thereabouts. I would get the second mate to relieve me at that hour. “He will turn out the cook and the steward at four,” I concluded, “and then give you a call.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“She remembered her threat to him before they had gone down on the rocks together, and her evil wish. Those words had been very wicked; but since that she had risked her life to save his. They might say what they pleased of her, and do what they pleased. She knew what she knew. Then the father raised his son’s head”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“Clothe? I don’t clothe ‘em. I look after their insides. No one can’t say as my child’en look starved. If parson’s folk want to see ‘em clothed they must do it theirselves.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“bezique”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“the little maid threw two flowers growing on the same stem—an allegory of which I could make nothing, until it broke upon me that she meant to convey to me that he and she were brother and sister,”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“I’ve been in the water practically since nine o’clock. The question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or—to come on board here.” I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered from this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever confronted by such clear issues.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“She draws over twenty feet. She’s the Liverpool ship Sephora with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“I’ll come and get the weed, Mally; but it shall all be for you,” said Barry.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“He made no motion to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he should not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by just that troubled incertitude. “What’s the matter?” I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the face upturned exactly under mine. “Cramp,” it answered, no louder.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“looked back, one saw the same dust and faces... Foremost of all marched four men with sabres—this was the vanguard. Next, behind, the crowd of singers, and behind them the trumpeters on horseback. The vanguard and the chorus of singers, like torch-bearers in a funeral procession, often forgot to keep the regulation distance and pushed a long way ahead... Ryabovitch was with the first cannon of the fifth battery.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“She was a wild-looking, almost unearthly creature, with wild-flowing, black, uncombed hair, small in stature, with small hands and bright black eyes; but people said that she was very strong, and the children around declared that she worked day and night and knew nothing of fatigue. As to her age there were many doubts. Some said she was ten, and others five-and-twenty, but the reader may be allowed to know that at this time she had in truth passed her twentieth birthday.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“and after torrents of tears, she could pray, and then—think again her dream of happiness was ended for ever, and wish for death. The next morning, she opened her unwilling eyes to the light, and rose. It was day; and all must rise to live through the day, and she among the rest, though the sun shone not for her as before, and misery converted life into torture.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“If one looked ahead, one saw dust and the backs of men’s heads; if one looked back, one saw the same dust and faces... Foremost of all marched four men with sabres—this was the vanguard. Next, behind, the crowd of singers, and behind them the trumpeters on horseback. The vanguard and the chorus of singers, like torch-bearers in a funeral procession, often forgot to keep the regulation distance and pushed a long way ahead... Ryabovitch was with the first cannon of the fifth battery.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had not seen before. What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public garden at the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment. An extraordinarily large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in the mist; and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill rose up, sombre and pointed in the midst of the sand. The sun had just disappeared, and under the still flaming sky the outline of that fantastic rock stood out, which bears on its summit a fantastic monument. At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low as it had been the night before, and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. After several hours’ walking, I reached the enormous mass of rocks which supports the little town, dominated by the great church. Having climbed the steep and narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever been built to God on earth, as large as a town, full of low rooms which seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and lofty galleries supported by delicate columns. I entered this gigantic granite jewel which is as light as a bit of lace, covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend, and which raise their strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, and which are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the black sky by night.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“The Colonel, who remembered a not very dissimilar occurrence in India, was of the opinion that if Parkins had closed with it it could really have done very little, and that its one power was that of frightening. The whole thing, he said, served to confirm his opinion of the Church of Rome.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“He came twice a week to see Louisa Ellis, and every time, sitting there in her delicately sweet room, he felt as if surrounded by a hedge of lace. He was afraid to stir lest he should put a clumsy foot or hand through the fairy web, and he had always the consciousness that Louisa was watching fearfully lest he should.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“With an inward groan he gave way, and let his heart yield towards her. A sudden gentle smile came on his face. And her eyes, which never left his face, slowly, slowly filled with tears. He watched the strange water rise in her eyes, like some slow fountain coming up. And his heart seemed to burn and melt away in his breast.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“Do you rememberin’ Assumption, Calixta?” he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now well, now her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts. They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world. The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached. When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life’s mystery. He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating like a hammer upon her. With one hand she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders. The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“men of Fish were beyond all religion—the barest and most savage tenets of even Christianity could gain no foothold on that barren rock—so there was no altar, no priest, no sacrifice; only each night at seven the silent concourse by the shanty depot, a congregation who lifted up a prayer of dim, anaemic wonder.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“Hold by the hook, Barry,” she cried, pushing the stick of it before him, while she seized the collar of his coat in her hands. Had he been her brother, her lover, her father she could not have clung to him with more of the energy of despair.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“If the world were as bad as her grandfather said, it would be so bad that she would not care to live longer in it. But be that as it might, there was no doubt as to what she must do now.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“But in truth the man knew that she had saved his boy’s life, and that he had injured her instead of thanking her. He was now taking her to his heart, and as words were wanting to him, he was showing his love after this silent fashion. He held her by the hand as though she were a child,”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“Joe watched with glazed hopeless eyes. The horses were almost like his own body to him. He felt he was done for now. Luckily he was engaged to a woman as old as himself, and therefore her father, who was steward of a neighbouring estate, would provide him with a job. He would marry and go into harness. His life was over; he would be a subject animal now.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“As we was leaving, Mother said to him: “Never mind Charley’s nonsense, Frank. He is just mad because you beat him all hollow pitching horseshoes and playing cards.” She said that to make up for my slip, but at the same time she certainly riled me. I tried to keep ahold of myself, but as soon as we was out of the house she had to open up the subject and begun to scold me for the break I had made. Well, I wasn’t in no mood to be scolded. So I said: “I guess he is such a wonderful pitcher and card player that you wished you had married him.” “Well,” she said, “at least he ain’t a baby to give up pitching because his thumb has got a few scratches.” “And how about you,” I said, “making a fool of yourself on the roque court and then pretending your back is lame and you can’t play no more!” “Yes,” she said, “but when you hurt your thumb I didn’t laugh at you, and why did you laugh at me when I sprained my back?” “Who could help from laughing!” I said. “Well,” she said, “Frank Hartsell didn’t laugh.” “Well,” I said, “why didn’t you marry him?” “Well,” said Mother, “I almost wished I had!” “And I wished so, too!” I said. “I’ll remember that!” said Mother, and that’s the last word she said to me for two days.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“In the same singing divinity student’s voice in which he had talked to her father, with the same blinking and twitching of his shoulders, he began thanking Vera for her hospitality, kindness, and friendliness. “I’ve written about you in every letter to my mother,” he said. “If everyone were like you and your dad, what a jolly place the world would be! You are such a splendid set of people! All such genuine, friendly people with no nonsense about you.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces

“The level rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out like umbrellas.”
― Elsinore Books, Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces