Ethel Lilian Voynich Quotes

High up on Monte Salvatore the window of some shepherd's hut opened a golden eye. The roses hung their heads and dreamed under the still September clouds, and the water plashed and murmured softly among the pebbles of the shore.

I have only one offering to give, a broken heart.

He says things which need saying and which none of us have had the courage to say. This passage, where he compares Italy to a tipsy man weeping with tenderness on the neck of the thief who is picking his pocket, is splendidly written.

The training of children is such a serous thing, and it means so much to them to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should have thought the holier a man`s vocation and the purer his life, the more fit he is to be a father

They kill me because they are afraid of me; and what more can any man's heart desire?

A stone in the path may have the best intentions, but it must be kicked out of the path, for all that.

If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that your soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where the sacred fire burns eternally.

I dare say you will think it an absurd prejudice; but a human body, to me, is a sacred thing; I don't like to see it treated irreverently and made hideous.

Most of us are degraded in one way or another.

Monsignor Montan-n-nelli... is undoubtedly all you say, my dear doctor. In fact, he appears to be so much too good for this world that he ought to be politely escorted into the next.

In this month he had been too happy to sin much

As a literary composition, it is utterly worthless, and could be admired only by persons who know nothing about literature. As for its giving offence, that is the very thing I intended it to do.

If you are going to say a thing the substance of which is a big pill for your readers to swallow, there is no use in frightening them at the beginning by the form.

It matters just as much what to do, whether people hate you or love you

Life would be unendurable without quarrels. A good quarrel is the salt of the earth; it's better than a variety show!

The pine trees were rows of knife-blades whispering: "Fall upon us!" and in the gathering darkness the torrent roared and howled, beating against its rocking prison walls with the frenzy of an everlasting despair.
"Padre!" Arthur rose, shuddering, and drew back from the precipice. "It is like hell."
"No, my son," Montanelli answered softly, "it is only like a human soul.

I am rather observant, and have a habit of putting things together. I tell you that so that you may be careful when you don't want me to know a thing.

I believed in you as I believed in God. God is a thing made of clay, that I can smash with a hammer; and you have fooled me with a lie.

Has it never occurred to you that that miserable clown may have a soul–a living, struggling human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tender-hearted to everything–you that pity the body in its fool's dress and bells–have you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and misery, before all those people–feeling their jeers that cut like a whip–their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it looking round–so helpless before them all–for the mountains that will not fall on it–for the rocks that have not the heart to cover it–envying the rats that can creep into some hole in the earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb–it has no voice to cry out–it must endure, and endure, and endure.

Remember what your own Shelley says: 'The past is Death's, the future is thine own.' Take it, while it is still yours, and fix your mind, not on what you may have done long ago to hurt, but on what you can do now to help.

The bad principle is that any man should hold over another the power to bind and loose. It's a false relationship to stand in towards one's fellows

The hand of the Lord is heavy.

We always understood each other without many words, even when we were little things.

We are all fit for better things than we ever do

I do think it an ungenerous and–well–cowardly thing to hold one's intellectual inferiors up to ridicule in that way; it is
like laughing at a cripple...