Ann Bridge > Quotes

“What is freedom? It consists in two things: to know each his own limitations and accept them – that is the same thing as to know oneself, and accept oneself as one is, without fear, or envy, or distaste; and to recognise and accept the conditions under which one lives, also without fear or envy, or distaste. When you do this, you shall be free.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“They were getting to know not only the details of each other's lives, but getting to know one another - a different thing. The process of getting to know anyone is not merely a matter of listening, watching, and understanding. M. Maurois has pointed out how, in any new relationship, we feel an unconscious need to create, as it were, a new picture, a new edition of ourselves to present to the fresh person who claims our interest; for them, we in a strange sense wish to, and do, start life anew.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“A conviction, unformulated but strong, rose to the working level of her mind - that painting did something more important for Nicholas than the mere gratifying of a whim; that this form of work and liberty of expression straightened out in him something that was tangled, set free in him something that, shut up, turned bad and poisoned him from below.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“It all depended on what Walter decided. If - if he really did care about Rose Barum, she wouldn't stand in his way. It was so glaringly indecent to hold on to one's husband if he wanted someone else. The trouble was that she didn't know what Walter did want, and this was one of those questions you really couldn't ask.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“Lady Kilmichael, on the other hand, in common with many women of her generation, had made remarkably little use of her experience. It had been impressed upon her in youth that experience was necessary and valuable, but no one had ever told her what to do with it; it was something which you apparently acquired in large or small packets, like Lux, and then put away in a cupboard. Experience so treated does indeed leave a sort of sediment of knowledge - the mere possession of those stored packets may give a certain confidence; but it does not make a very vivid contribution to life.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“It was delicious in the garden. The storm had passed over long since, and it was still and warm; the sweetness of the stocks and roses filled the air with the peculiar intensity of fragrance of flowers after rain - in the evening light they had the unnatural shadowy vividness of a coloured photograph. The rain had stirred up the nightingales too - near and far, their bubbling ecstasy welled out from the dark shelter of ilexes and cypresses, and through the open windows of the villa there came presently the cool elusive sequences of Debussy's music - ghosts of melody rather than melodies, evocations rather than statements; gleams on water and pale lights in spring skies, a single star, slow waves beating in mist on a deserted shore. Grace leant back in the corner of her seat, listening, watching the leaves of the buckthorns, like little curved pencils, against the sky above her head; in the relaxation of fatigue her attention was fixed on nothing, but some part of her was profoundly aware of all these things - the scent of the flowers, the song of the nightingales, the cool western music, with its memories of her own Atlantic shores.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“In 1911 there was no airmail, spinning a deplorably rapid web of postal deliveries all over North Africa—still less was there the even more lamentable diffusion of ideas by the wireless. Today every small town in Morocco can, and does, listen to false, vain, and utterly subversive broadcasts in Arabic from Cairo radio.”
― Ann Bridge, A Lighthearted Quest

“As julia drove back towards The Sound she began to wonder if she had been very wise to tell Mrs. Martin that she might talk to Mr. O’Rahilly about Moran’s behaviour. Sally would inevitably mention that she had learned this unpalatable news from her, Julia; and this, almost equally inevitably, would make him guess that Gerald O’Brien was the source of Julia’s information. She stopped at The Sound and rang up the shack from the call-box there; Sally was in, and she asked her not to mention the business to Billy “for the present”—as before, she used no names.”
― Ann Bridge, Julia in Ireland

“Better not think about Mrs Barum either; it was really such a strain going on being fair.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“There you have it—the ‘not knowing the people sufficiently well’ has all along been one of the major French mistakes,”
― Ann Bridge, A Lighthearted Quest

“It is surprising the amount of talk that two people will get through during a week of solid tête-à-tête. Now in modern life it is an extreme rarity, outside marriage, to get a week of uninterrupted companionship with any human being.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“She should remember what Flaubert said - 'Le génie, c'est travailler tous les jours!”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“Spain really is practically Africa; down the southeast coast even the butterflies are the same.”
― Ann Bridge, A Lighthearted Quest

“My thought is, that if the Moslems of our colonial Empire do not gently, little by little, become converted, a nationalist movement analogous to that in Turkey will arise; an intellectual élite will be formed in the big cities, taught à la française without having either French hearts or minds, an élite which will have lost its own Islamic faith, but which will keep the label in order to influence the masses. . . . Nationalist sentiments will be exalted by this élite, which when it finds an opportunity (such as would be provided by difficulties threatening France from without or from within) will use Islam as a lever to rouse the ignorant multitudes, and will try to create an independent African Moslem Empire.”
― Ann Bridge, A Lighthearted Quest

“Intellectual mistakes, spiritual mistakes, emotional mistakes—all intangible, but how appallingly potent and dangerous intangibles can be! That is what the modern world so fatally tends to forget, obsessed as it is by material and economic progress. Spiritual values?—idealistic rubbish! But they are the ultimate ones, even in things political.”
― Ann Bridge, A Lighthearted Quest

“Women in the early forties who have been wives and mothers for over twenty years are liable to suffer from a slight sense of guilt whenever they embark on any purely self-regarding activity; but Lady Kilmichael had better reasons than this for her desire to avoid the eyes of acquaintances on her journey. She was leaving her home, her husband and her family - possibly for good.”
― Ann Bridge, Illyrian Spring

“There are two things which everyone must do on the roof of the Café de France: look at the view of the High Atlas, and eat Cornes de Gazelles, long slender curved cakes of ground almonds, with their coffee.”
― Ann Bridge, A Lighthearted Quest