Isobel

“But to them, I knew, I was a go-between, they thought of me in terms of another person. When Lord Trimingham wanted Marian, when Marian wanted Ted, they turned to me. The confidences Marian had made me had been forced out of her. With Ted it was different. He felt he owed me something - me, Leo: the tribute of one nature to another.

I did not like to think of him giving up the things he cared for and sleeping on the ground. I could not believe it was softer than the beds at Brandham; besides, he might be killed. There was a lot of him to be killed, and what there was he carried about with him, it was not spread out over houses and parklands.”
― L P Hartley, The Go-Between

“Ah! si ton mari mourait...
Si mon mari mourait..., répéta lentement Thérèse.
Nous nous marierions ensemble, nous ne craindrions plus rien, nous jouirions largement de nos amours... Quelle bonne et douce vie!”
― Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin

“When the pioneers of university training for women demanded that women should be admitted to the universities, the cry went up at once: ‘Why should women want to know about Aristotle?’ The answer is NOT that all women would be the better for knowing about Aristotle … but simply: ‘What women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle. It is true that many women care nothing about him, and a great many male undergraduates turn pale and faint at the thought of him – but I, eccentric individual that I am, do want to know about Aristotle, and I submit that there is nothing in my shape or bodily functions which need prevent my knowing about him.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

“Love: Such a Soul, says Love, swims in the sea of joy, that is in the sea of delights flowing and streaming from the Divinity, and she feels no joy, for she herself is joy, and so she swims and flows in joy without feeling any joy, for she dwells in joy and joy dwells in her; for through the power of joy she is herself joy, which has changed her into itself.
Now they have one common will, like fire and flame, the will of the lover and that of the beloved, for love has changed this Soul into itself.

The Soul: Ah, sweetest, pure, divine Love, says this Soul, how sweet is this changing by which I am changed into the thing that i love better than I love myself! And I am so changed that i have therein lost my name for the sake of loving, I who can love so little; and I am changed into that which I love more than myself, that is, into Love, for I love nothing but Love.”
― Marguerite Porete, Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls