Rebecca Quotes

“I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.”

“You have blotted out the past for me, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo.”

“The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.”

“Why did dogs make one want to cry? There was something so quiet and hopeless about their sympathy. Jasper, knowing something was wrong, as dogs always do. Trunks being packed. Cars being brought to the door. Dogs standing with drooping tails, dejected eyes. Wandering back to their baskets in the hall when the sound of the car dies away.”

“I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.”

“There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair”

“And he went on eating his marmalade as though everything were natural.”

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

“I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.”

“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”

“I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.”

“I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.”

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”

“Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear.”

“This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.”

“If you think I’m one of those people who try to be funny at breakfast you’re wrong. I’m invariably ill-tempered in the early morning.”

“What degradation lay in being young.”

“I thought of all those heroines of fiction who looked pretty when they cried, and what a contrast I must make with a blotched and swollen face, and red rims to my eyes.”

“Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.”

“We’re not meant for happiness, you and I.”

“The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.”

“A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.”

“Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real.”

“We’ve got a bond in common, you and I. We are both alone in the world.”