Radclyffe Hall Quotes

The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Ugly, degrading, rather terrible half-truths ... It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence ... Their hearts ached while their lips formed recriminations. Their hearts burst into tears while their eyes remained dry and accusing, staring in hostility and anger ... They could not forgive and they could not sleep, for neither could sleep without the other's forgiveness, and the hatred that leapt out at moments between them would be drowned in the tears that their hearts were shedding. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty
self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken
by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they
considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others
who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided
themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their
righteous judgments. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Life's not all beer and skittles ~ Radclyffe Hall

You're neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you're as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else; only you're unexplained as yet
you've not got your niche in creation. But some day that will come, and meanwhile don't shrink from yourself, but face yourself calmly and bravely. Have courage; do the best you can with your burden. But above all be honourable. Cling to your honour for the sake of those others who share the same burden. For their sakes show the world that people like you and they can be quite as selfless and fine as the rest of mankind. Let your life go to prove this
it would be a really great life-work, Stephen. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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 ~ Radclyffe Hall

It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Language is surely too small a vessel to contain these emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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 ... ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Outrageous ... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. ~ Radclyffe Hall

But her mother had looked at her curiously, gravely, puzzled by this creature who seemed all contradictions - at one moment so hard, at another so gentle, gentle to tenderness, even. Anna had been stirred, as her child had been stirred, by the breath of the meadowsweet under the hedges; for in this they were one, the mother and daughter, having each in her veins the warm Celtic blood that takes note of such things - could they only have divined it, such simple things might have formed a link between them. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Those who have reached the seventh incarnation carry with them all that was learnt, suffered and experienced in the previous six. Life for them is a perpetual and unsatisfying deja vu. Nothing is new, truly interesting, truly vital. Everything has done before, even before it begins. Such a soul is said to live a 'Saturday Life ~ Radclyffe Hall

The eyes of the young are drawn to the stars, and the spirit of youth is seldom earth-bound. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation
one point of light. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Strange it is, but unforgettable moments are often connected with very small happenings, happenings that assume fictitious proportions, especially when we are children. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

But Pierre, who like all who have known the sea was a child at heart, broke into loud exclamations ~ Radclyffe Hall

But her eyes would look cold, though her voice might be gentle, and her
hand when it fondled would be tentative, unwilling. The hand would be
making an effort to fondle, and Stephen would be conscious of that
effort. Then looking up at the calm, lovely face, Stephen would be filled
with a sudden contrition, with a sudden deep sense of her own
shortcomings; she would long to blurt all this out to her mother, yet
would stand there tongue-tied, saying nothing at all. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Nothing appears to succeed like success in a world that is principally made up of failure. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Stephen, why are you shivering?'
'I don't know, my darling.'
'Mary, why are you crying?'
'I don't know, Stephen.'
p424 ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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 ~ Radclyffe Hall

Clothes, after all, are a form of self-expression. ~ Radclyffe Hall

[On homosexuality:] Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond - yet the world will call it unclean. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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 ~ Radclyffe Hall

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 ~ Radclyffe Hall

Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement. One could say things in writing without feeling self-conscious, without feeling shy and ashamed and foolish -- one could even write of the days of young Nelson, smiling a very little as one did so. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Too late, too late, your love gave me life. Here am I the creature you made through your loving; by your passion you created the thing that I am. Who are you to deny me the right to love? But for you I need never have known existence. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

What remained? Loneliness, or worse still, far worse because it so deeply degraded the spirit, a life of perpetual subterfuge, of guarded opinions and guarded actions, of lies of omission if not of speech, of becoming an accomplice in the world's injustice by maintaining at all times a judicious silence, making and keeping the friends one respected, on false pretences, because if they knew they would turn aside, even the friends one respected. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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 ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Prostitution, perversion, and pornography are intertwined with independence and radical politics in the history of outstanding women. Radclyffe Hall, Colette, Anaïs Nin, Kate Millett, Erica Jong--all of these women used the money they made from writing about sexuality to make it possible for them to live as rebels, dykes, feminists, artists, or whatever deviant and defiant identities they assumed. ~ Patrick Califia-Rice

A great many women can feel and behave like men. Very few of them can behave like gentlemen. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

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. ~ Radclyffe Hall

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it's obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi.

I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking ~ Forrest J. Ackerman

She was half running away from the hall, and she knew that she had done something cataclysmic, and she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the darkness and to disappear forever. ~ J.K. Rowling

In my dreams of Heaven, I always see the great Masters gathered in a huge hall in which they all reside. Only Mozart has his own suite. ~ Victor Borge

You have two choices," Vance said.
I stopped in the doorway to the hall and put my hands on my hips.
"And those would be?" I asked.
"We can talk or we can f**k."
My eyes rounded. Then they narrowed. I didn't answer.
"Though," he went on, "I should tell you even if you pick talking, after we're done, we're still gonna f**k."
I frowned at him and leaned in. "You are too much," I snapped.
He ignored my threatening posture. "You don't chose, I will, and I'll pick f**king. We can talk after. ~ Kristen Ashley

Home is wherever my books are. ~ Mary Beth Hall

Go back to your bingo hall. ~ Jerry Lawler

She didn't drink a lot, but she drank me into wonderland where we spent the time giggling and laughing. However, know this if you are able or leave while you still can. Love is unstable when built on what must come and go with the wind and sand.
After awhile, I heard the increasing activity from the hall as the campus was starting to come alive and I said to Penny, "I think we need to get to the bistro" and she responded by slipping one brown shoe delicately over her white nylon socking. ~ Joseph Persia

When you're doing late night you're on the grind every night; you send someone to check on your mom. ~ Arsenio Hall

I tugged at the hem of my brand-new Hecate Hall issue blue plaid skirt (Kilt? Some sort of bizarre skirt/kilt hybrid? A skilt?) ~ Rachel Hawkins

In the hall itself the din of the music - for this is the real way to play a jukebox and what it was originally for - was so tremendous that it shattered Dean and Stan and me for a moment in the realization that we had never dared to play music as we wanted, and this was how loud we wanted. ~ Jack Kerouac

I wish I lived next to Carnegie Hall. Then, if someone asked me how to get to my house, I would just say 'Practice, practice, practice, and then take a left.' ~ Demetri Martin

The minister paused in his narrative. At that moment there came a tremendous blast of wind which shook the windows of the manse, and burst open the hall door, and caused the candles to flicker and the fire to go roaring up the chimney. It is not too much to say that, what with the uncanny story, and the howling storm, we all felt that creeping sort of uneasiness which so often seems like the touch of something from another world - a hand stretched across the boundary-line of time and eternity, the coldness and mystery of which make the stoutest heart tremble. ("Sandy The Tinker") ~ Charlotte Riddell

The beauty of interdisciplinary conversation is that the mode of expression is essentially different for each practitioner, even if ideas are shared. ~ Sarah Hall

It's really more about the moment than it is the award. You know how trophies are, you don't really think about them after a while. It's more about the moment of being encouraged to keep doing what you're doing that keeps you going. ~ Mark Hall

It works far better," Jane went on, apparently still intent on berating him, "when you trust those people with the truth. When you give them all the facts."
Her tone put him on the defensive. "You mean, the way you did when you told me about Nancy's disappearance?"
Jane paled. "Well…that was different."
"How so?" He approached her with a scowl. "You left out the important fact that she might be pregnant. If I'd known, we would all have left for York as soon as Tristan could join us, and we wouldn't have wasted so much time."
Her throat moved convulsively. "You can't blame me for that. I was protecting Nancy."
"And all those years ago, I was protecting you," he said fiercely. He took another step toward her. "I know you resent how I manipulated you into jilting me, but my damned brother had just torn my family apart, and I wasn't sure what lay ahead of me. I couldn't bear to watch your love for me die in the slums of London."
"So you killed it instead?" she choked out.
His heart faltered. "Did I?"
Alarm spread over her face. Then she turned, as if to flee.
He grabbed her arm to tug her up close to him. She wouldn't look at him, which only inflamed him more. "I answered your questions," he rasped. "Now answer mine."
He could feel her tremble, see uncertainty flash over her face in profile. Utter silence reigned in the room. Even the servants had apparently finished in the dining room across the hall, for no sound penetrated thei ~ Sabrina Jeffries

I saw my first gig here actually (Festival Hall in Brisbane) Duran Duran. ~ Bernard Fanning

In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs. ~ Robert Benchley

To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available ... in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin. ~ Manly Hall

I'm not a big fan of any video, especially my own. In a word, I hated the Hall & Oates videos. ~ Daryl Hall

That feeling in your stomach when you hear him whispering off-key, down the hall. That way your heart trips and then hammers against your ribs when he sees you and he grins like a little kid at the top of a steep, shiny-hot slide. Call it hormones, an early-stage bacterial zombie infection, or a very pleasant dream I was experiencing; I didn't care. I liked That. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth a dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.

Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and prep ~ Charles Dickens

Now, why was diagonal cutting better than cutting straight across? Because the corner of a triangularly cut slice gave you an ideal first bite. In the case of rectangular toast, you had to angle the shape into your mouth, as you angle a big dresser through a hall doorway: you had to catch one corner of your mouth with one corner of the toast and then carefully turn the toast, drawing the mouth open with it so that its other edge could clear; only then did you chomp down. Also, with a diagonal slice, most of the tapered bite was situated right up near the front of your mouth, where you wanted it to be as you began to chew; with the rectangular slice, a burdensome fraction was riding out of control high on the dome of the tongue. One subway stop before mine, I concluded that there had been logic behind the progress away from the parallel and toward the diagonal cut, and that the convention was not, as it might first have appeared, merely an affection of short-order cooks. ~ Nicholson Baker

There was never a point in my life where I gave up. My marriage, as you know, fell apart. ~ Deidre Hall

If you want me in the Hall of Fame put me in because of some contributions that I have made to country music. ~ Buck Owens

Pro Football Hall of Famer is something that everyone recognizes as the pinnacle of any achievement in sport. All the fame and all the recognition that we single out in various industries, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is really special. ~ John Riggins

Sometimes you can only understand why things happen when you see them in the rearview mirror. ~ Ron Hall

And when you're a weird and awkward and paranoid person at all times, CastieCon is the happiest place on the planet.
It's like, a baseline level of freakiness is expected here, right? So unless you're disemboweling goats in the vendor hall, no one gives a damn who you are or what you're doing. ~ J.C. Lillis

We die of habits,
deplorable ones
like merely living:
finally fatal.
- from Tubes ~ Donald Hall

Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in the hall of eternity, I shall be the same. ~ Anandamayi Ma

He had things he wanted to tell me too; I knew by the way his breath hung in the air before us. ~ Tina May Hall

Learn to be comfortable in your own skin despite what you see and hear. ~ Michelle Cook-Hall

That mother-"
"Hey, watch what you're about to call the guy standing at your door," Nate says.
"That motherly, wonderful, down-the-hall neighbour of mine. What's wrong with saying that? ~ Ginger Scott

Kids now are so used to surround sound and the power in theater speakers, that the concert hall is a disappointment to them. ~ David Ogden Stiers

You've found that there is something that can make you feel, and make you feel present: sex. Not the routine, dusk-and-dawn sex of a trusted, established relationship, but illicit, dangerous sex. Sex that is novel and leaves you sore; that is experienced in the gaps between your mundane, moral life; that is strange and breathless and addictive. ~ Sarah Hall

The equipment you've got really dictates what you're going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It was very weird. ~ Marianne Faithfull

Marlboro Man and Tim were standing in the hall, not seven steps from the bathroom door. "There she is," Tim remarked as I walked up to them and stood. I smiled nervously.
Marlboro Man put his hand on my lower back, caressing it gently with his thumb. "You all right?" he asked. A valid question, considering I'd been in the bathroom for over twenty minutes.
"Oh yeah…I'm fine," I answered, looking away. I wanted Tim to disappear.
Instead, the three of us made small talk before Marlboro Man asked, "Do you want something to drink?" He started toward the stairs.
Gatorade. I wanted Gatorade. Ice-cold, electrolyte-replacing Gatorade. That, and vodka. "I'll go with you," I said.
Marlboro Man and I grabbed ourselves a drink and wound up in the backyard, sitting on an ornate concrete bench by ourselves. Miraculously, my nervous system had suddenly grown tired of sending signals to my sweat glands, and the dreadful perspiration spell seemed to have reached its end. And the sun had set outside, which helped my appearance a little. I felt like a circus act.
I finished my screwdriver in four seconds, and both the vitamin C and the vodka went to work almost instantly. Normally, I'd know better than to replace bodily fluids with alcohol, but this was a special case. At that point, I needed nothing more than to self-medicate.
"So, did you get sick or something?" Marlboro Man asked. "You okay?" He touched his hand to my knee.
"No," I answered. "I got…I go ~ Ree Drummond

One Oxford poet confessed to me that I had been scary because I talked American and wore tennis shoes. ~ Donald Hall

Whoever becomes the head of the National Theater finds himself in a position like that of Nelson's Column - pigeons dump on you because you're there. ~ Peter Hall

Let me put it this way. You, my beautiful girl, have the power to really hurt me, with how I feel about you. Far more than anyone else ever has or ever could. I don't know if you realize that. ~ Heather Hall

Behind every piece of paper lies a human situation. ~ Edward T. Hall

Pianists of extraordinary talent, such as Christina Petrowska,spend a large part of their early lives perfecting technique ... Miss Petrowska,a Canadian with a phenomenal ability to play the most difficult music cleanly, gave a demonstration of her achievements at Carnegie Recital Hall. A product of the Juilliard School who studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti in Europe, Miss Petrowska built most of her program around fiercely difficult contemporary works. She has fingers that work like chrome-plated pistons, and her high-seated position let her bring pulverizing power to bear. ~ Donal Henahan

That's when I lost my faith in this town, in these people. They're friends until it counts. ~ Holly Hall

Ah, woman. She is an enigma. An anomaly of perfection & irony. She can lure angels into her arms & give birth to a nation of ideologies. ~ Ace Antonio Hall

When I was 17, I was at La Coupole brasserie, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir asked me to join them at their table. They were fascinated that I'd watched their programme on existentialism back home and wanted to understand nothingness and being. ~ Jerry Hall