Quotes: Loneliness. Lost Generation. Love. Lying.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Loneliness
We are lonelier in crowds than when we are alone in our own rooms.
Loneliness 430 We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. Thoreau, Walden.

Nothing produces loneliness more than distrust.
Loneliness 421 ...what loneliness is more lonely than distrust? George Eliot, Middlemarch.

The loneliest words: “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Loneliness 1134 One of the most striking effects produced, is the sense of loneliness…Christ deserted both in Heaven and earth; that despair…which wrung forth the saddest utterance man ever made—‘Why has thou forsaken me?’ Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Lost Generation
We were a generation to whom everything seemed possible; to be young at a time like that was incredibly lucky.
Lost Generation 277 Archibald MacLeish: We knew we belonged to a great, a greatly creative generation—that we lived in a generative time[;] everything seemed possible—was possible[;] to be young in a time like that was incredible luck-—to be young and in Paris! Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook [I immediately think of An American in Paris.]

Love
Fall in love with my hair, eyes, shoulders, slippers, but not my mouth.
Love 163 Please don’t fall in love with my mouth—hair, eyes, shoulders, slippers—but not my mouth. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

The love affair may be insane, but it’s not inane.
Love 171 “It may be an insane love affair…but it’s not inane.” Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

In love, he moved as if in a dream.
Love 172 …he moved in a half-dream. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

Who was the first person to discover that poetry can drive away love?
Love 44 I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

Freud on love: “The over-estimation of the object.”
Love 400 Freud’s ironic description of being in love, ‘The over-estimation of the object....’ Bloom, Western Canon.

Excess in love brings no honor or worthiness.
Love 45 Chorus: When love is in excess/ It brings a man no honor/ Nor any worthiness. Euripides, Medea.

Love lightly, quick to shed or tighten.
Love 86 Nurse: Light should the heart’s affections lie on us, quick to cast off and quick to pull tighter. Euripides, Hippolytus.

Love is the sincere gift of self.
Love 202 Council emphasizes that the most important thing about love is the sincere gift of self. Pope John Paul II, Threshold

Possessed of intense life, they looked at me remotely.
Love 97 I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

They stared at each other, alone in space.
Love 119 Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

If he loved with all he had, he could not love as much in eighty years as I in a day.
Love 179 Heathcliff: If he [Edgar Linton] loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day…and Catherine has a heart as deep as I have. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

Fall on her grave and die like a faithful dog.
Love 213 Isabella: Heathcliff, if I were you, I’d go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

People hate their wives, but not their brothers or sisters; I wish you were my brother.
Love 287 Cathy: Pretty Linton! I wish you were my brother…people hate their wives sometimes; but not their sisters and brothers…. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

Behavior accompanying love.
Love 262 Emma: this sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of every thing’s being dull and insipid…I must be in love…. Austen, Emma

She imagined his advances and her refusal as they became merely friends.
Love 264 …as she sat drawing or working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his side was that she refused him…their affection was to subside into friendship. Austen, Emma

If I didn’t love you so much, I could talk about it more.
Love 430 Mr. Knightley: If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. Austen, Emma

Love contains the seeds of hatred, fear and confusion; love can coexist with hatred, giving it fury.
Love 375 Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: For love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

To be loved is embarrassing.
Love 402 But it is always embarrassing to be loved. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Love in action is harsh as compared to love in dreams.
Love 56 …love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

His love was more like revenge.
Love 626 …that love was not like love, but more like revenge. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Love is between delight and misery.
Love 175 It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery. Austen, Persuasion.

She was happy in her misery or miserable in her happiness.
Love 229 She was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness…. Austen, Persuasion.

They walked, heedless of everything around them, going over the events that had preceded their admitting their love for each other.
Love 241 …as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling house-keepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgments, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest. Austen, Persuasion.

The evening consisted of exquisite moments.
Love 244 That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite moments. Austen, Persuasion.

Love is nature’s deception.
Love 319 Schopenhauer : …love is a deception practiced by nature…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

If Petrarch’s love had been gratified, he would no longer have written poetry.
Love 320 Schopenhauer : If Petrarch’s passion had been gratified, his song would have been silenced. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

As he talked, I was thinking of the other man.
Love 416 “I spent some happy hours right here…always liked Nathan, and he never knew…this pennyr’yal always reminded me, as I’d sit and gather it and hear him talkin’—it always would remind me of—the other one.” Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

People told me that time would help me stop missing her, but I still miss her every day.
Love 477 "I do miss her…folks all kep' repeatin' that time would ease me, but I can't find it does[;] no, I miss her just the same every day." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

I keep feeling she will walk in that door; I can’t get over losing her.
Love 478 "I get so some days it feels as if poor dear might step right back into the kitchen[;] I keep a watchin' them doors as if she might step in to ary one…I can't get over losin' of her no way nor no how." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

No pleasures are worth the pain of love.
Love 330 In the noon and afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter, who said of love, “All other pleasures are not worth its pain.” Emerson, Love.

Love in most men is lust.
Love 234 The Ragged One: Now, love in most young men is not love, but lust…. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha, Part 1: 1605.

Love returns us to simplicity.
Love 940 It is the surest test of genuine love, that it brings back our early simplicity to the worldliest of us. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

We love people not for what they have done for us, but for what we have done for them.
Love 118 As Sterne says: “We don’t love men so much for the good they have done us as for the good we have done them.” Tolstoi, War and Peace.

We love those to whom we give and dislike those who give to us.
Love 408 Perhaps it is true that we love best those to whom we give and dislike those who give to us. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

When love is too strong, it doesn’t last long.
Love 393 And when love is too strong, it don’t last long,/ As many have found to their pain. Dickens, Pickwick.

The course of true love is not straight.
Love xv …the course of true love is not a railway. Chapter 8. Table of Contents. Dickens, Pickwick.

If we could look into the hearts of those whom we think love us, what would we see?
Love and friendship 698 If we could look into the hearts where we wish to be most valued, what should you expect to see? Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.

Love and joy cannot be forced.
Love joy 118 Oedipus: Who ever heard of joy or love by force? Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

Lying
Old liars can convince themselves that what they are saying is true, although at the same time, they tell themselves that they are lying.
Lying 70 With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears of emotion in earnest, although at that very moment…they are able to whisper to themselves, “You know you are lying…you’re acting now….” Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

You can tell someone that he whores, drinks and blasphemes and he won’t resent it; but tell him he lies and he will respond with fury.
Lying 307 One may tell another he whores, drinks, blasphemes, and it may pass unresented; but to say he lies, though but in jest, is an affront that nothing but blood can expiate. Addison, 6/23/1711. The Spectator.