Tanya > Tanya's Quotes

“The case is closed, Mr. Poldark. You will kindly step down.” “Otherwise,” said Dr. Halse, “we will have you committed for contempt of court.” Ross bowed slightly. “I can only assure you, sir, that such a committal would be a reading of my inmost thoughts.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“And Ross again knew himself to be happy-in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He was filled with a queer sense of enlightnment. It seemed to him that all his life had moved to this pinpoint of time down the scattered threads of twenty years; from his old childhood running thoughtless and barefoot in the sun on Hendrawna sands, from Demelza's birth in the squarlor of a mining cottage, from the plains of Virginia and the trampled fairgrounds of Redruth, from the complex impulses which had governed Elizabeth's choice of Francis and from the simple philosophies of Demelza's own faith, all had been animated to a common end-and that end a moment of enlightenment and understanding and completion. Someone--a Latin poet--had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come. He thought: if we could only stop here. Not when we get home, not leaving Trenwith, but here, here reaching the top of the hill out of Sawle, dusk wiping out the edges of the land and Demelza walking and humming at my side.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“I said to myself, ‘He has done this and he has paid for it. Isn’t that enough? Is a man to be condemned forever? Why do I go to church and repeat the Lord’s Prayer if I don’t hold to it, if there is no forgiveness? Is our own behavior higher than the founder of Christianity, that we should set a higher standard for others?”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“The book from which you take your teaching, Dr. Halse, says that man shall not live by bread alone. These days you’re asking men to live without even bread.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“Since I met you,' he said, 'I've had no eyes and no thought for any other girl. When I was away nothing mattered about my coming back but this. If there was one thing I was sure of, it wasn't what I'd been taught by anyone else to believe, not what I learned from other people was the truth, but the truth that I felt in myself- about you.'

'Don't say any more.' She had gone very white. But for once her frailness did not stop him. It had to come out now.

'It isn't very pretty to have been made a fool of by one's own feelings,' he said. 'To take childish promises and build a-a castle out of them. And yet- even now sometimes I can't believe that all the things we said to each other were so trivial or so immature. Are you sure you felt so little for me as you pretend?”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“At that, his smile faded and he kissed her. “Ross,” she said. “Dear Ross.” “I love you,” he said, “and am your servant. Demelza, look at me. If I’ve done wrong in the past, give me leave to make amends.” So he found that what he had half despised was not despicable, that what had been for him the satisfaction of an appetite, a pleasant but commonplace adventure in disappointment, owned wayward and elusive depths he had not known before, and carried the knowledge of beauty in its heart.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“No man wants his wife to be a woman that other men don't desire....But every man wants his wife to be a woman that other men don't get.”
― Winston Graham, The Four Swans

“Beauty without the beloved is a like a sword through the heart.”
― Ida Alexa Ross Wylie

“If you wish to discover a man's true feelings, it is always best to provoke him.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

“Curiouser and curiouser!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“I don't think..." then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and yes, loss.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders

“And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.”
― Geraldine Brooks

“I've interrupted a party. Is it in celebration of the peace or in honor of the next war?”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“Tedn't law. Tedn't right. Tedn't just. Tedn't sense. Tedn't friendly.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“George stared across the street. 'There is only one trouble with the Poldarks,' he said after a moment. 'They cannot take a beating.'
'And only one trouble with the Warleggans,' said Ross. 'They never know when they are not wanted.'
George's color deepened. 'But they can appreciate and remember an insult.'
'Well, I trust you will remember this one.' Ross turned his back and went down the steps into the tavern.”
― Winston Graham, Demelza

“For if you wish to discover a man's true feelings, it is always best to provoke him.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

“Perhaps you're right; we don't ever regain what we lightly lose.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

“...are not all women treated by all men like something inferior, like chattels you take up and put down at will?”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

“Blemishes on the beauty of a person one loves are like grace notes adding something to a piece of music.”
― Winston Graham, The Black Moon

“You see, Ross, in every right marriage, in every good marriage a woman has to be three things, don't she? She's got to be a wife and look after a man's comforts in the way a man should be looked after. Then she's got to bear his children and get all swelled up like a summer pumpkin and then often-times feed them after and smell of babies and have them crawling all about her . . . But then, third, she has also to try and be his mistress at the same time; someone he is still interested in; someone he wants, not just the person who happens to be there and convenient; someone a bit mysterious . . . someone whose knee or -- or shoulder he wouldn't instantly recognize if he saw it beside him in bed. It's -- it's impossible.”
― Winston Graham, The Black Moon

“God, thought Ross, it does work, and unfairly; but I want her, not any other, not the most beautiful eighteen-year-old damsel born out of a sea-shell, not the most seductive houri of any sultan's harem; I want her with her familiar gestures and her shining smile and her scarred knees, and I know she wants me in just the same way, and if there's any happiness more complete than this I don't know it and am not sure I even want it.”
― Winston Graham, The Black Moon

“There's no paradise in love! It's--you're thinking in the wrong way. Love--the sort you're asking me for--is of the earth, earthy. Beautiful, maybe--sometimes it be like a gold mine that one digs into. But of the earth--earthy. Tis all wrong to speak of paradise. Love may be the nearest human beings can get--but it is still outside the gates--for it is human--easily lost--animal in the way it work, though more, much more than animal. Oftentimes it--uplifts, transports...but--but it should not be mistaken. It is a--a terrible mistake to pretend it is something quite different.”
― Winston Graham, The Four Swans

“Tenderness is not like money: the more you give to one, the more you have for others.”
― Winston Graham, The Four Swans

“Love is not a possession to hoard. You give it away. It's a blessing and a balm.”
― Winston Graham, The Four Swans

“Life is like--like one of those hobby-horses you ride at a fair--round and round you go enjoying every moment and then the--then the music stops...”
― Winston Graham, The Angry Tide

“Of course he'll bring no money. Nor never will. He's not the type to--accumulate. But it's a good name to have. And he's becoming a personality in the county. One never knows quite why this happens, eh? Not so much what a man does. More a matter of character.”
― Winston Graham, The Angry Tide

“The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn't exist yet. That's tomorrow! It's only now that can ever be, at any moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive--and together. We can't ask more. There isn't any more to ask.”
― Winston Graham, The Angry Tide

“People who brag of their ancestors are like root vegetables. All their importance is underground.”
― Winston Graham, The Stranger from the Sea