Phillip Margulies > Quotes

“Beauty misleads without lying, like an ambiguous prophecy in a Greek play. We read into it our hopes, to which it is indifferent. We ask it to be true and good, but it has its own way of measuring worth, its own standard and authority.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora

“I received her sewing kit and pins and brooches; a blank diary purchased especially for me; "Advice to a Young Married Woman", by a minister, which she asked me not to read till I was older----; "Exemplary Letters for Sundry Occasions"; "The Whole Duty of Woman"; and some volumes of Walter Scott's novels, which I might enjoy when my reading had improved. With a glance at Rev. Fowler, whose advice she had sought in this matter, she said that, for a sensible girl such as she knew me to be, novels by respectable authors could provide harmless amusement, but I must remember not to neglect my duties for them, not to demand that my life be a romance, or over strain myself with too much reading.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora

“The truth was withheld only because so much else had to be forfeited.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora

“Talk about something else. Tell me about this book you are writing."
"What book?" I say. Then : "Oh, I know what you mean. I am not doing that anymore. I couldn't finish._________
I don't think he knows, not really. Not yet.
In my haste to finish this story before death overtakes me, inevitably I have left out many things, and often I have expresses myself inelegantly, and no doubt here and there I have said more than I meant to. When you return, my dear type writer, we will review what we have done, and add this and subtract that. This work has become my hobby and my consolation, and I enjoy it.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora

“Talk about something else. Tell me about this book you are writing."
"What book?" I say. Then : "Oh, I know what you mean. I am not doing that anymore. I couldn't finish._________
I don't think he knows, not really. Not yet.
In my haste to finish this story before death overtakes me, inevitably I have left out many things, and often I have expressed myself inelegantly, and no doubt here and there I have said more than I meant to. When you return, my dear type writer, we will review what we have done, and add this and subtract that. This work has become my hobby and my consolation, and I enjoy it.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora

“They were bound together by a tie which angels may not blush to approve. A man who can attach to him a woman however base in heart and corrupt in life, is not all bad. A woman who can maintain her trust, who can waste her money like water to stand by her friend, amid the darkest clouds that can gather, that woman cannot be all evil. And if in vice, and degradation, and pollution, and infamy, she rises so far above it all as to vindicate her original nature, I must confess that I honor this trait most of all.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora

“Though the punishment for murder is very severe, the world holds murderers in far less contempt than whores.”
― Phillip Margulies, Belle Cora