Poldark Quotes

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“Men's tongues in some things outrun women's.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

“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

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

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

“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

“Her shadow kept her company along the corridor to her bedroom, preceding her like a welcoming innkeeper.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

“He found, quite to his surprise, that he was happy. Not merely happy in Demelza's happiness but in himself. He couldn't think why. The condition just existed within him.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“The most frightening blazing anger was alive in her now. It was not only Elizabeth that she could have killed but Ross. She could have thrown every piece of crockery at him, and knives and forks too. Indeed she could have attacked him knife in hand. Fundamentally there was nothing meek or mild about her. She was a fighter, and it showed now.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan

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

“Not for the first time he was conscious of emotional lights and shades in his wife that could not be categorized, could not be named as sensuous or emotional as such, perhaps derived from each and gave to each but in essence grew out of a deeper fund of temperament that he still could not altogether apprehend. The simple miner's daughter was not simple in character at all.”
― Winston Graham, The Four Swans

“Did I behave myself tonight, Ross?’ she asked. ‘Did I behave as Mrs Poldark should behave?’
‘You misbehaved monstrously,’ he said, ‘and were a triumph.”
― 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

“...in the best society hardly anyone can be certain who their father is.”
― Winston Graham, Bella Poldark

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

“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

“I am enceinte, gravid, pregnant, in pup, call it what you will. No doubt there are as many names for the production of a child as for the act which initiates it.”
― Winston Graham, The Twisted Sword

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

“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

“And what of this young woman beside him, whom he had loved devotedly for four years and still did love? She had given him more than Elizabeth ever could: months of unflawed relationship, unquestioning trust (which he was now betraying in thought) . Oh nonsense! What man did not at some time or another glance elsewhere? And who could complain if it remained at a glance? (Chance was a fine thing).”
― Winston Graham, Jeremy Poldark

“The trouble with music was that in some way it was too nostalgic...every tune seemed to exist with its notes firmly rooted in an event or an emotion or a period of time.”
― Winston Graham, The Black Moon

“Making money at gambling was like seeing ghosts: you never met someone who'd seen a ghost, only someone who knew someone who'd seen a ghost. You only met people who knew people who'd made a fortune at White's. Or on the racecourse.”
― Winston Graham, The Loving Cup

“I'm going to get him to sign my boobs. With his tongue.”
― Rowan Coleman, Looking for Captain Poldark

“I am a miner's daughter," Demelza said. "I was not brought up gentle. Gentleness –is that the right word?– came upon me when I was half grown. I have Ross to thank for that. And you. But it don't alter me underneath. I still have two marks on my back where Father used the belt. There's naught a few drunks could do but what I couldn't give them back. Tis all a matter of being in the mood.”
― Winston Graham, Jeremy Poldark

“Avrebbe voluto pregare per qualcosa che di sicuro il Dio della vedova Chegwidden avrebbe disapprovato.”
― Winston Graham, Ross Poldark

“He was not discontented, but he was too restless, too preoccupied. Each day led so relentlessly to the next, linked by cause and effect, anticipation and result, preparation and achievement.”
― Winston Graham, Demelza