Celia > Celia's Quotes

“Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return—that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“...I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.”
― Dodie Smith (Cassandra Mortmain, I Capture the Castle), I Capture the Castle

“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"

He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending - I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“It isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not crying, because I am... Pause to mop up. Better now.
Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I am surprised to see how much I have written; with stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso

“The devil is not as black as he is painted.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso