The King in Yellow Quotes

“I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”

“The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me.”

“I have not a care of my own, but I am more restless than if I had.”

“For I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now.”

“I could tell more, but I cannot see what help it will be to the world. As for me, I am past human help or hope.”

“You and I have all we need in this world. Ah! how sinister and covetous you look already!”

“‘Ah’ she said, ‘to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different--and may take centuries.’”

“No, he is not vicious, nor is he in the least demented. His mind is a wonder chamber, from which he can extract treasures that you and I would give years of our life to acquire.”

“‘It’s a bad place for a stranger,’ old Goulven had said: ‘you’d better take a guide;’ and I had replied, ‘I shall not lose myself.’ Now I knew that I had lost myself, as I sat there smoking, with the sea-wind blowing in my face.”

“There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let him seek it there.”

“It was too late for me to regret what had occurred during the day.”

“It is hard,--hard to work always--always alone with never a friend you can have in honour, and the love that is offered means the streets, the boulevard--when passion is dead. I know it,--we know it,--we others who have nothing,--have no one, and who give ourselves, unquestioning--heart and soul, knowing the end.”

“The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts.”

“What a precious triple donkey I had made of myself!”

“That fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, ‘I love you, but I think I love Boris best,’ told on me at last. I had never imagined that it could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had deceived myself.”

“Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my sorrow even to myself.”

“‘Yes, oh yes,’ said the other with bitterness. ‘American citizenship is a precious privilege when every goggle-eyed German--’ His anger choked him.”

“‘My children,’ said the preacher, ‘one truth the human soul finds hardest of all to learn: that it has nothing to fear. It can never be made to see that nothing can really harm it.’”

“I said that I was no good. That is true, but still I was not exactly a comic opera villain. I had led an easy-going reckless life, taking what invited me of pleasure, deploring and sometimes bitterly regretting consequences.”

“The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and above all--oh, above all else--ambitious.”