Richard Marsh > Quotes

“Take my advice, don't appreciate any man too highly. In the book of every man's life there is a page which he would wish to keep turned down.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“Sometimes I venture to call my soul my own”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“You employ large phrases.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“Those who hate are kin.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“So far, in the room itself there had not been a sound. When the clock had struck ten, as it seemed to me, years ago, there came a rustling noise, from the direction of the bed. Feet stepped upon the floor,— moving towards where I was lying. It was, of course, now broad day, and I, presently, perceived that a figure, clad in some queer coloured garment, was standing at my side, looking down at me. It stooped, then knelt. My only covering was unceremoniously thrown from off me, so that I lay there in my nakedness. Fingers prodded me then and there, as if I had been some beast ready for the butcher’s stall. A face looked into mine, and, in front of me, were those dreadful eyes. Then, whether I was dead or living, I said to myself that this could be nothing human,— nothing fashioned in God’s image could wear such a shape as that. Fingers were pressed into my cheeks, they were thrust into my mouth, they touched my staring eyes, shut my eyelids, then opened them again, and— horror of horrors!— the blubber lips were pressed to mine— the soul of something evil entered into me in the guise of a kiss.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“Then this travesty of manhood reascended to his feet, and said, whether speaking to me or to himself I could not tell,”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“That the man in the bed was the one whom, to my cost, I had suffered myself to stumble on the night before, there could, of course, not be the faintest doubt. And yet, directly I saw him, I recognised that some astonishing alteration had taken place in his appearance. To begin with, he seemed younger,— the decrepitude of age had given place to something very like the fire of youth. His features had undergone some subtle change. His nose, for instance, was not by any means so grotesque; its beak-like quality was less conspicuous. The most part of his wrinkles had disappeared, as if by magic. And, though his skin was still as yellow as saffron, his contours had rounded,— he had even come into possession of a modest allowance of chin. But the most astounding novelty was that about the face there was something which was essentially feminine; so feminine, indeed, that I wondered if I could by any possibility have blundered, and mistaken a woman for a man; some ghoulish example of her sex, who had so yielded to her depraved instincts as to have become nothing but a ghastly reminiscence of womanhood.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“I turned round, mechanically, like an automaton. Such passivity was worse than undignified, it was galling; I knew that well. I resented it with secret rage. But in that room, in that presence, I was invertebrate.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“Ordinarily I believe that I have as high a spirit as the average man, and as solid a resolution; but when one has been dragged through the Valley of Humiliation, and plunged, again and again, into the Waters of Bitterness and Privation, a man can be constrained to a course of action of which, in his happier moments, he would have deemed himself incapable. I know this of my own knowledge.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“It is essential to a politician that he should have his firmest friends among the fools, or his climbing days will soon be over.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“He leaped, shrieking, off the bed, and sprang at me, clasping my throat with his horrid hands, bearing me backwards on to the floor; I felt his breath mingle with mine * * * and then God, in His mercy, sent oblivion.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“It was the old tale retold, that to the life of every man there is a background,”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“braggadocio.”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle

“Love's upsetting!—in”
― Richard Marsh, The Beetle