Portrait of a Lady Quotes

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

“‘It has made me better loving you,’ he said on another occasion; ‘it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter.‘”

“I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.”

“Meanwhile my business is not to bother, but simply to be thankful for life and love.”

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

“I’m yours for ever -- for ever and ever. Here I stand; I’m as firm as a rock. If you’ll only trust me, how little you’ll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”

“She’s as bright as the morning. She corresponds to your description;it is for that I wish you to know her. She fills all your requirements.” “More or less, of course.” “No; quite literally. She is beautiful, accomplished, generous, and for an American, well-born. She is also very clever and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune.”

“I call people rich when they are able to gratify their imagination.”

“I always want to know the things one shouldn’t do.” “So as to do them?” asked her aunt. “So as to choose.” said Isabel”

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

“She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own heart and the agitations of the world.”

“She was fond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country.”

“If you have been hated, you have also been loved.”

“Isabel is written in a foreign tongue. I can’t make her out.”

“If one is strong, one loves only the more strongly.”

“Isabel was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast . . .”

“She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organization, should move in the realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic.”

“‘Things are always different than what they might be,’ said the old man. ‘If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.‘”

“And the great advantage of being a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything.”

“Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.”

“Whatever life you lead, you must put your soul into it--to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you; it becomes reality!”

“And you can’t always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you’re very ready to do; but there’s another thing that’s still more important--you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that--you must never shrink from it. That doesn’t suit you at all--you’re too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views--that’s your great illusion, my dear. But we can’t. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all--not even yourself.”

“One can’t judge till one’s forty; before that we’re too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.”

“You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.”

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn’t lose it all simply because you have lost a part.”