Суть дела

It was a formality, not because he felt himself free from serious sin but because it had never occurred to him that his life was important enough one way or another. He didn’t drink, he didn’t fornicate, he didn’t even lie, but he never regarded this absence of sin as virtue. When he thought about it at all, he regarded himself as a man in the ranks, the member of an awkward squad, who had no opportunity to break the more serious military rules.

for the first time he realized the pain inevitable in any human relationship - pain suffered and pain inflicted. How foolish one was to be afraid of loneliness.

They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.

My dear, I am growing old, and after every voyage I am fatter: I am not a good man, and sometimes I fear that my soul in all this hulk of flesh is no larger than a pea. You do not know how easy it is for a man like me to commit the unforgivable despair. Then I think of my daughter. There was just enough good in me once for you to be fashioned. A wife shares too much of a man’s sin for perfect love. But a daughter may save him at the last.

Никто не может поручиться, что будет любить вечно

Когда мы кому-нибудь говорим: «Я без тебя жить не могу», - мы на самом деле хотим сказать: «Я жить не могу, зная, что ты страдаешь, что ты несчастна, что ты в чем-то нуждаешься». Вот и все.

To start off happy... It must make an awful difference afterwards. Why, it might become a habit, mightn't it?

Он не мог верить в Бога, который так бесчеловечен, что не любит своих созданий.

Вы думаете что у Бога больше злобы, чем у женщины?

Я люблю неудачников, я не могу любить преуспевающих.

Как глупо ждать счастья в мире, где так много горя. Свою потребность в счастье он узрел до минимума: фотографии убраны в ящик, мертвые вычеркнуты из памяти; вместо украшений на стене – ремень для правки бритвы и пара ржавых наручников; и все равно, думал он, у человека остаются глаза, которые видят, и уши, которые слышат. Покажите мне счастливого человека, и я покажу вам либо самовлюбленность, эгоизм и злобу, либо полнейшую духовную слепоту.

Чуть не вся жизнь уходила на то, что бы оттянуть очередную беду. Оттяжек никогда не приносит вреда. Ему даже казалось, что, если потянуть подольше, в конце концов всё решит за тебя смерть.

- К нам заходила миссис Касл, - сказала Луиза.

• От этого не мудрено заболеть.

"Как глупо ждать счастья в мире, где так много горя."

Людям не нужно, чтобы другие знали, что у них на душе.

Их покупали за деньги, а его - взывая к состарданию. Сострадание опаснее, потому что его не измеришь.

Men can become twins with age. The past was their common womb; the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. They had graduated through the same fevers, they were moved by the same love and contempt.

Here a man’s colour had no value: he couldn’t bluster as a white man could elsewhere: by entering this narrow plaster passage, he had shed every racial, social and individual trait, he had reduced himself to human nature. If he had wanted to hide, here was the perfect hiding-place; if he had wanted to be anonymous, here he was simply a man. Even his reluctance, disgust and fear were not personal characteristics; they were so common to those who came here for the first time

In the future - that was where the sadness lay. Was it the butterfly that died in the act of love? But human beings were condemned to consequences.