Home > Work > Absent in the Spring
1 " Better to wear out than to rust out! "
― Mary Westmacott , Absent in the Spring
2 " You are alone and you always will be. But, please God, you'll never know it. "
3 " She had never needed to think about it before. It had been quite easy to fill her life with unimportant trivialities that left her no time for self-knowledge. "
4 " You can take it from me, Averil, that a man who's not doing the work he wants to do—the work he was made to do—is only half a man. I tell you as surely as I'm standing here, that if you take Rupert Cargill away from his work and make it impossible for him to go on with that work, the day will come when you will have to stand by and see the man you love unhappy, unfulfilled—old before his time—tired and disheartened—only living with half his life. And if you think your love, or any woman's love, can make up to him for that, then I tell you plainly that you're a damned sentimental little fool. "
5 " ... during every conversation, sooner or later somebody says, “Nobody knows what I went through at that time! "
6 " That was why she had had to come here, to the desert. This clear, terrible light would show her what she was. Would show her the truth of all the things she hadn't wanted to look at—the things that, really, she had known all along. "
7 " Yes, one has felt that—I have felt it myself. It is very dark, very terrible...''It was not dark—it was light—blinding light—there was no shelter—no cover—no shadow.''We mean the same thing, though. For you it was light that was terrible, because you had hidden so long under cover and in deep shade. But for me it was darkness, not seeing my way ,being lost in the night. But the agony is the same—it is the knowledge of one's own nothingness and of being cut off from the love of God.'Joan said slowly, 'And then—it happened—like a miracle. I saw everything. Myself—and what I had been. All my silly pretences and shams fell away. It was like—it was like being born again... "
8 " Fear came upon her again—the fear of the vast empty spaces where man is alone except for God... "
9 " She should have known.If you loved people you should know about them.You didn't know because it was so much easier to believe the pleasant, easy things that you would like to be true, and not distress yourself with the things that really were true. "
10 " You know, you're the sort of woman who ought to be raped. It might do you good "
11 " Tu visada buvai ir liksi viena. Tik duok Dieve, kad niekada to nesuprastum. "
