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“But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more than any man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of arts. I do feel that music is in a very serious state just now, though extraordinarily interesting. Every now and then in history there do come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of thought at once. For a moment it’s splendid. Such a splash as never was. But afterwards—such a lot of mud; and the wells—as it were, they communicate with each other too easily now, and not one of them will run quite clear. That’s what Wagner’s done.”

“Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.”

“In this jangle of causes and effects, what had become of their true selves? Here Leonard lay dead in the garden, from natural causes; yet life was a deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror of those days, caught glimpses of the diviner wheels.”

“Durham sentou-se no chão fora do seu alcance. Era fim de tarde. Os sons de Maio, os aromas de Cambridge em flor, entravam flutuando pela janela e diziam a Maurice, «Tu não nos mereces.» Sentia-se meio morto, um estranho, um labrego em Atenas. Não tinha nada que estar aqui, ou ter um amigo assim. - Durham. Durham aproximou-se. Maurice estendeu uma mão e sentiu a cabeça aconchegar-se nela. Esqueceu-se do que ia dizer. Os sons e os aromas segredavam, «Tu és nós, nós somos a juventude.»”

“Yet he was doing a fine thing — proving on how little a soul can exist. Fed neither by Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward, a lamp that would have blown out, were materialism true. He hadn't a God, he hadn't a lover — the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and suppress any legends about Heaven.”

“Las personas se transformaron en seres vivos. Hasta entonces, había supuesto que eran lo que él pretendía ser —lisas piezas de cartón sobre las que se dibujaba una imagen convencional—, pero cuando paseaba por los patios de noche y veía por las ventanas cómo unos cantaban y otros charlaban y otros estudiaban, se formó en él, por un proceso en que la razón no intervenía, la convicción de que eran seres humanos con sentimientos semejantes a los suyos.”

“«Volte, espero hoje à noite na casa do lago., Penge, Alec.»: uma bela mensagem para ser transmitida através do posto de correios local! (...) Que bela situação! Continha todas as promessas de chantagem, e na melhor das hipóteses era de uma incrível insolência. Claro que não devia responder, e estava agora fora de questão oferecer um presente a Scuder. Tinha saído fora da sua classe, e era bem feito. Mas, apesar disso, durante a noite todo o seu corpo ansiou pelo de Alec. Chamava a isso luxúria, uma palavra fácil de dier, e contrapunha a ela o seu trabalho, a sua família, os seus amigos, a sua posição na sociedade. Nessa coligação devia certamente incluir a sua vontade. Pois se a vontade conseguir saltar por cima das classes, será o fim da civilização tal como a fizemos. p.238, MAURICE, E.M. FORSTER ----------------------------------------------”

“—Tienes que saber que yo siempre estoy confuso. No fui ni escribí porque quería apartarme de ti sin quererlo. Tú no lo entendías. Querías hacerme volver por todos los medios y yo tenía un miedo terrible. Te sentía a ti cuando intentaba dormirme en casa del médico. Me obsesionabas. Yo sabía que algo iba mal, pero no podía decir el qué. Así que me dediqué a pensar que eras tú.”