Top 51 Radclyffe Quotes
#1. Pat's been deserted -- have you heard that, darling? Do you think she'll take the veil or cocaine or something?
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#2. But Pierre, who like all who have known the sea was a child at heart, broke into loud exclamations
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#3. For your own sake you must go to Oxford, you'll need every weapon your brain can give you; being what you are you'll need every weapon.
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#4. What a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes - free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger.
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#5. So now Stephen must actually learn at first hand hwo straight can run the path of true love, in direct contradiction to the time-honoured proverb. Must realize more clearly than ever, that love is only permissible to those who are cut in every respect to life's pattern.
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#6. The sorrows of childhood are mercifully passing, for it is only when maturity has rendered soil mellow that grief will root very deeply. Stephen's
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#7. For together with those who themselves being normal, had long put intellects above bodies, were writers, painters, musicians and scholars, men and women who, set apart from their birth, had determined to hack out a niche in existence.
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#8. A few dauntless souls even enter the chemist's -- that shamelessly anatomical chemist's, whose wares do not figure in school manuals on the practical uses of rubber.
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#9. The eyes of the young are drawn to the stars, and the spirit of youth is seldom earth-bound.
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#10. Strange it is, but unforgettable moments are often connected with very small happenings, happenings that assume fictitious proportions, especially when we are children.
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#11. The eyes themselves were the eyes of a writer, always a little tired in expression.
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#12. A great many women can feel and behave like men. Very few of them can behave like gentlemen.
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#14. It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence.
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#15. Oh, yes -- very easy to talk about death, but not so easy to manage the dying.
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#16. The doctors cannot make the ignorant think, cannot hope to bring home the sufferings of millions; only one of ourselves can someday do that ... It will need great courage but it will be done, because all things must work toward ultimate good; there is no real wastage and no destruction.
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#17. [On homosexuality:] Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond - yet the world will call it unclean.
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#18. For the Celtic soul is the stronghold of dreams, of longings come down the dim paths of the ages; and within it there dwells a vague discontent, so that it must for ever go questing. And
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#19. The grey of a bitter, starved-looking morning. The town like a mortally wounded creature, torn by shells, gashed open by bombs. Dead streets - streets of death - death in streets and their houses; yet people still able to sleep and still sleeping.
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#20. Why should this girl have crossed Stephen's path, or indeed Stephen hers, if it came to that matter? Was not the world large enough for them both? Perhaps not - or perhaps the event of their meeting had already been written upon tablets of stone by some wise if relentless recording finger.
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#21. Since this is a hard and sad truth for the telling; those whom nature has sacrificed to her ends
her mysterious ends that often lie hidden
are sometimes endowed with a vast will to loving, with an endless capacity for suffering also, which must go hand in hand with their love. p 146
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#22. Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them. The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard -- it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one's back for a moment.
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#23. Stephen, why are you shivering?'
'I don't know, my darling.'
'Mary, why are you crying?'
'I don't know, Stephen.'
p424
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#24. Nothing appears to succeed like success in a world that is principally made up of failure.
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#25. If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours.
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#26. Love is the sweetest monotony that was ever conceived of by the Creator.
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#27. There is something mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being.
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#28. As things turned out her choice had been happy, for seldom had two people loved more than they did; they loved with an ardour undiminished by time; as they ripened, so their love ripened with them.
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#29. And hearing him, Stephen found herself thinking that all men had something simple about them; something that took pleasure in the things that were blameless, that longed, as it were, to contact Nature.
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#30. In this world there is only toleration for the so-called normal.
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#31. I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world. So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction.
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#32. This is only the beginning. Many die, many kill their bodies and souls, but they cannot kill the justice of God, even they cannot kill the eternal spirit. From their very degradation that spirit will rise up to demand of the world compassion and justice
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#33. But now, here she was, very wishful to pray, while not knowing how to explain her dilemma: 'I'm terribly unhappy, dear, unprobable God - ' would not be a very propitious beginning.
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#34. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.
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#35. The eye of youth is very observant. Youth has its moments of keen intuition, even normal youth
but the intuition of those who stand mi-way between the sexes is so ruthless, so poignant, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge ...
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#36. And so blinded was she by those gleams of glory which the stars fling into the eyes of young lovers, that she saw perfection where none existed ... p146
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#37. My dear, don't be foolish, there's nothing strange about you, someday you may meet a man you can love. And supposing you don't, well, what of it, Stephen? Marriage isn't the only career for a woman.
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#38. Language is surely too small a vessel to contain these emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit.
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#39. An ungentlemanly war it will be,' he grumbled. 'Will I lead my men with a sword? Ah, but no! I will lead my men with a dirty revolver in my hand. Parbleu! Such is modern warfare! A machine could do the whole cursed thing better -- we shall all be nothing but machines in this war.
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#40. Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation
one point of light.
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#41. Do try to remember this: even the world's not so black as it is painted
-Valerie to Stephen (pg. 408)
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#42. Wars come and wars go but the world does not change: it will always forget an indebtedness which it thinks it expedient not to remember.
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#43. Do you believe in God, Martin?'
And he answered, 'Yes, because of His trees. Don't you?'
'I'm not sure ... '
'Oh, my poor, blind Stephen! Look again, go on looking until you do believe.
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#44. For the sake of all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, many of them, it's up to you to have the courage to make good.
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#45. Oh, Stephen, Stephen, get used to the world -- it's a horrible place full of horrible people, but it's all there is, and we live in it, don't we? So we've just got to do as the world does, my Stephen.
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#46. The realization of great mutual love can at times be so overwhelming a thing, that even the bravest of hearts may grow fearful.
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#47. And her eyes filled with heavy, regretful tears, yet she did not quite know for what she was weeping. She only knew that some great sense of loss, some great sense of incompleteness possessed her, and she let the tears trickle down her face, wiping them off one by one with her finger.
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#48. Clothes, after all, are a form of self-expression.
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#49. Outrageous ... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort.
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#50. In her they instinctively sensed an outlaw, and theirs was the task of policing nature.
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#51. To her it seemed an inevitable thing as much a part of herself as her breathing; and yet it appeared transcendent of self, and she looked up and onwards towards her love
for the eyes of the young are drawn to the stars and the spirit of youth is seldom earth-bound. p146
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