Time Wanderer Quotes

A quote blog to accompany voyageofatimewanderer.wordpress.com

[timewandererquotes]

". . . their eyes met, dwelling in that meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger—not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose." - Chapter 20, "Silas Marner" by George Eliot

[timewandererquotes]

No shadow of contempt had ever grown out of his familiarity with her. And indeed I am disposed to take objection to that old proverb; or at least to believe that contempt is only engendered of familiarity with things which are in themselves base and spurious. The priest, who is familiar with the altar, learns no contempt for its sacred images; but it is rather the ignorant neophyte who sneers and sniggers at things which he cannot understand. The artist becomes only more reverent as toil and study make him more familiar with his art; its eternal sublimity grows upon him, and he worships the far-away Goddess of Perfection as humbly when he drops his brush or his chisel after a life of patient labour, as he did when first he ground colour or pointed rough blocks of marble for his master. And I cannot believe that a good man's respect for the woman he loves can be lessened by that sweet and every-day familiarity in which a hundred household virtues and gentle beauties—never dreamed of in the ball-rooms where he first danced with an unknown idol in gauzy robes and glimmering jewels—grow upon him, until he confesses that the wife of ten years' standing is even ten times dearer than the bride of a week's honeymoon.

Chapter 7, Vol 3, “Aurora Floyd” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

[timewandererquotes]

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

Part III, “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter Miller Jr

[timewandererquotes]

But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Part III, “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter Miller Jr

[timewandererquotes]

'Sometimes I guess' he says, 'I feel that about Italy in general... all this living history, different eras and experiences, joy and suffering stacked up on top of each other like sheets of paper.'

Chapter 13, “One Italian Summer” by Rebecca Serle

[timewandererquotes]

The troubles and vexations of the last twenty-four hours suddenly seemed less oppressive. It is difficult, I reflected, to take an exaggerated view of any personal upheaval when standing in the building that has witnessed the joys, the hopes, the griefs and all the spiritual tremors of mortal man for centuries. . . . In the presence of this ancient, silent witness, it was right that personal tears should assume their own insignificant proportions. They were, after all, as ephemeral as the butterflies that hovered over the Michaelmas daisies on the graves outside.

Chapter 8, “Village School” by Miss Read

[timewandererquotes]

But Emily had inherited certain things from her fine old ancestors—the power to fight—to suffer—to pity—to love very deeply—to rejoice—to endure. These things were all in her and looked out at you through her purplish-grey eyes. Her heritage of endurance came to her aid now and bore her up.

Chapter 2, “Emily of New Moon” by Lucy Maud Montgomery

[timewandererquotes]

The agencies which have worked this miracle are very earthly ones -- pain and sorrow . . . through dark and painful means a better end is coming.

Chapter XI, Volume 2, “A Canadian Heroine” by Anna Louisa Walker (Mrs Harry Coghill)

[timewandererquotes]

If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. . . .  Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

Chapter 35, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood

[timewandererquotes]

I intend to get out of here. It can’t last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn’t last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

Chapter 23, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood

[timewandererquotes]

... and at night the past ran its drowned fingers across my cheek.

Part 10, “Remote Sympathy” by Catherine Chidgey

[timewandererquotes]

Let me tell you something... it's oil and pigment on scraps of linen or hide and sunlight passing through prisms of color. What we're trying to buy, when we buy art, is ourselves.

Part 2 “Manhattan (September 1958), “The Last Painting of Sara de Vos” by Dominic Smith

[timewandererquotes]

In this part of England our forefathers the giants left their earthworks, their barrows and standing stones. We still have, every Englishman and woman, some drops of giant blood in our veins. In those ancient times, in a land undespoiled by sheep or plough, they hunted the wild boar and the elk. The forest stretched ahead for days. Sometimes antique weapons are unearthed: axes that, wielded with double fist, could cut down horse and rider. Think of the great limbs of those dead men, stirring under the soil. War was their nature, and war is always keen to come again. It’s not just the past you think of, as you ride these fields. It’s what’s latent in the soil, what’s breeding; it’s the days to come, the wars unfought, the injuries and deaths that, like seeds, the soil of England is keeping warm.

“Falcons”, Part 1, “Bring Up the Bodies” by Hilary Mantel

[timewandererquotes]

Suppose within every book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

“Anna Regina” Part 5, “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel

[timewandererquotes]

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

Part 5, “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel

[timewandererquotes]

All that was here - peace, and happiness, and a reasonable life, and yet it never struck me to come and live in it. Looking back I am astonished, and can in no way account for the tardiness of my discovery that here, in this far-away corner, was my kingdom of heaven.

May 7th, “Elizabeth and her German Garden” by Elizabeth von Arnim

[timewandererquotes]

He knew he had told them before. He knew what he was doing. You have to tell stories over and over. It is the creation of myth. The only road to immortality.

Le Morte d’Arthur, “Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe” by Stuart McLean