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‘Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had longed for years to be better than he was - who had taken his selfish passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that he had walked with them as a devout quire, till now that a terror had risen among them, and they could chant no longer, but threw out their common cries for safety.’

‘He had never liked the makeshifts of poverty, and they had never before entered into his prospects for himself; but he was beginning now to imagine how two creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common, might laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far they could afford butter and eggs.’

“I don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am righteous. God forbid. I don't know everything. A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life clear. That's a bad punishment. If it is so with you, - well, I'm very sorry for you. But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go on working with you.”

“I shall never forget what you have done,” Fred answered. “I can't say anything that seems worth saying - only I will try that your goodness shall not be thrown away.”

The conversation about Mary, between Mr Farebrother and Fred at the gambling inn….Iconic

‘It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal. The first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost their limbs.’

The beginning of a fracture in an initially happy marriage…

‘At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and her consciousness had room to expand; her past was come back to her with larger interpretation.’

“I shall work away at the first thing that offers. I suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope…There are certain things which a man can only go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that the best is over with him.”

‘He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all.’

A very subtle kind of hypocrisy that we must be wary of

…With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.’

‘The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases…intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past...

(Contd)

“Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in the first trouble that has come.”

The chapter on how an outwardly picture-perfect married couple come to terms with the fact that they are in debt….made me feel more things than any thriller ever. Incredible writing.

‘(Mr Farebrother) bent to look at Mary's labels and praise her handwriting. Fred felt horribly jealous - was glad, of course, that Mr Farebrother was so estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty sometimes are.’

SCREAMING

(Also can u tell I’m having a hard time not posting a line from nearly every page? I’m just so in love with the writing!)

‘Fred could not help feeling he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Mary for her good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man whatsoever. But the fighting with Mr Farebrother must be of a metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the muscular.’

😭

“Young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how those wishes cost others.”

"You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that - if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it.”

‘If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.‘

”I shall never hear from you. And you will forget all about me.”

“No,” said Dorothea, “I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten any one whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so. And I have a great deal of space for memory at Lowick, haven't I?” She smiled.

“No,” she said, “I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.”

“…I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me - my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker.”

'That is nonsense, Fred. Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the consequences of their recklessness.'

‘Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary. If I had to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs.'

‘But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.’

‘He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?’

'I feel sure I can help a little. I have some money, and don't know what to do with it - that is often an uncomfortable thought to me. I am sure I can spare two hundred a-year for a grand purpose like this. How happy you must be, to know things that you feel sure will do great good! I wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning.’

‘Every word I have written here is true, and each one describes the reality of my life. My hands are empty, and I fix you with an honest look. This is how I have lived, and yet it reveals nothing.
I will go alone to the end.’

Love when a chapter ends on a note so vague that you can’t wait to keep reading.

‘If someone says something to you that you already know do not make him aware that you know it, for this results in your companion feeling estranged. If someone relates a story or anything else to you inaccurately do not say to him: 'It is not as you say, it is like this and this.' If it is concerned with religion make him aware of the correct version, but gently.’

Had low expectations after being very disappointed by ‘the ABC murders’ (the only other Agatha christie book I’ve read), but I’m having a lot of fun with this

“Like many others who went through that time, he was gripped by what he could think of only as a numbness, though he knew it was a feeling compounded of emotions so deep and intense that they could not be acknowledged because they could not be lived with.”

“…he knew that he presented to the public regard an appearance which belied his condition...But from the moment he walked out of Gordon Finch’s office, he knew, somewhere within the numbness that grew from a small center of his being, that a part of his life was over, that a part of him was so near death that he could watch the approach almost with calm.”

“You must, O my brother, improve your inward aspect until it becomes better than your virtuous outward appearance, for the former is where the gaze of the Real obtains, while the latter is where the envious gaze of creation is to be found.”