The Heart of the Matter Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.

The Heart of the Matter

We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

The Heart of the Matter

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim

The Heart of the Matter

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.

The Heart of the Matter

A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treas...

The Heart of the Matter

Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.

The Heart of the Matter

The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being- it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. I human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

The Heart of the Matter

In my school, he thought, they learn bitterness and frustration and how to grow old.

The Heart of the Matter

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

The Heart of the Matter

He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, th...

The Heart of the Matter

You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.' Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.

The Heart of the Matter

I don't believe anyone who says love, love, love. It means self, self, self.

The Heart of the Matter

People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.

The Heart of the Matter

Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate ...

The Heart of the Matter

There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

The Heart of the Matter

Beauty is like success: we can't love it for long.

The Heart of the Matter