Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Lisa Kleypas

Quote by Lisa Kleypas

“Sara was silent, all of her exuberance at being with Perry fading. She had come here to be with him, not to receive a lecture from his mother, no matter how well-intentioned. Why was Perry allowing it without a word? He was being complacent while his mother dominated their time together. Ignoring a twinge of resentment, Sara tried to steer the conversation in a new direction. "Tell me what happened in Greenwood Corners while I was away. How is old Mr. Dawson's gout?" "Much better," Martha replied. "He actually put his shoes on the other day and went for a stroll." "His niece Rachel became engaged to Johnny Chesterson the day before last," Perry added. "Oh, that's wonderful," Sara exclaimed. "The Chestersons are lucky to have such a nice girl in their family." Martha nodded primly. "Rachel is the kind of spiritual, self-effacing girl that Mr. Kingswood always hoped his son would marry. She would never dream of drawing attention to herself... as some young women do." "Are you referring to me?" Sara asked quietly. "I am making a point about Rachel." Slowly Sara set her cup and saucer on the table and looked at Perry, who had colored at his mother's rudeness. "It's a wonder you never courted such a paragon," Sara told him, smiling although her chest was tightening with anger. Martha answered for her son. "Perry was never free to court her or any other girls in the village. Someone else was always taking up his time with her demanding possessiveness." Sara felt her face turn red. "Was that you or me, I wonder?”

Quote by Lisa Kleypas

Work

Dreaming of You

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas

Lisa Kleypas, born in 1964, is a renowned American romance novel author. Her works are known for their delicate emotional descriptions and captivating storylines, which have won the hearts of numerous readers. more

You May Also Like

“A battle between two worlds. She realised that St. Mawr drew his hot breaths in another world from Rico's, from our world. Perhaps the old Greek horses had lived in St. Mawr's world. And the old Greek heroes, even Hippolytus, had known it. With their strangely naked equine heads, and something of a snake in their way of looking round, and lifting their sensitive, dangerous muzzles, they moved in a prehistoric twilight where all things loomed phantasmagoric, all on one plane, sudden presences suddenly jutting out of the matrix. It was another world, an older, heavily potent world. And in this world the horse was swift and fierce and supreme, undominated and unsurpassed.--"Meet him half-way," Lewis said. But half-way across from our human world to that terrific equine twilight was not a small step. It was a step, she knew, that Rico could never take. She knew it. But she was prepared to sacrifice Rico.”

“Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror. But go on saving life, the ghastly salvation army of ideal mankind. At the same time secretly, viciously, potently undermine the natural creation, betray it with kiss after kiss, destroy it from the inside, till you have the swollen rottenness of our teeming existences.”

“Old!" she said to herself. "I am not old! I have lived many years, that is all. But I am as timeless as an hour-glass that turns morning and night, and spills the hours of sleep one way, the hours of consciousness the other way, without itself being affected. Nothing in all my life has ever truly affected me.--I believe Cleopatra only tried the asp, as she tried her pearls in wine, to see if it would really, really have any effect on her. Nothing had ever really had any effect on her, neither Caesar nor Antony nor any of them. Never once had she really been lost, lost to herself. Then try death, see if that trick would work. If she would lose herself to herself that way.--Ah, death--!" But Mrs. Witt mistrusted death too. She felt she might pass out as a bed of asters passes out in autumn, to mere nothingness.--And something in her longed to die, at least, positively: to be folded then at last into throbbing wings of mystery, like, a hawk that goes to sleep. Not like a thing made into a parcel and put into the last rubbish-heap.”

“And her love for her ranch turned sometimes into a certain repulsion. The underlying rat-dirt, the everlasting bristling tussle of the wild life, with the tangle and the bones strewing: Bones of horses struck by lightning, bones of dead cattle, skulls of goats with little horns: bleached, unburied bones. Then the cruel electricity of the mountains. And then, most mysterious but worst of all, the animosity of the spirit of place: the crude, half-created spirit of place, like some serpent-bird for ever attacking man, in a hatred of man's onward struggle towards further creation. The seething cauldron of lower life, seething on the very tissue of the higher life, seething the soul away, seething at the marrow. The vast and unrelenting will of the swarming lower life, working forever against man's attempt at a higher life, a further created being.”

“Every new stroke of civilisation has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the 'dragon', in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half-sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win to the next stage. For all savagery is half sordid. And man is only himself when he is fighting on and on, to overcome the sordidness. And every civilisation, when it loses its inward vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort. An Augean stable of metallic filth. And all the time, man has to rouse himself afresh to cleanse the new accumulations of refuse. To win from the crude, wild nature the victory and the power to make another start, and to cleanse behind him the century-deep deposits of layer upon layer of refuse: even of tin cans.”

“Cu o strângere de inimă, fiecare își privea casa și trecea mai departe: . Iar peste sufletele oamenilor se rostogolea și un val de indiferență: >. Cine se gândea la suferințele patriei? Nu ei, nu cei care pleacă în această seară. Panica anula tot ce nu era instinct, freamăt animalic al trupului. Să iei ce aveai mai prețios pe lume și pe urmă... Și numai ce trăia, ce respira, plânge, iubea avea valoare în noaptea aceea! Puțini erau cei care își regretau bogățiile. Strângeai în brațe o femeie sau un copil, restul nu mai conta; restul putea să dispară în flăcări.”

“Dar porțile de fier din toate gările erau deja zăvorâte și păzite de soldați. Mulțimea se agăța de bare, le zgâlțâia, apoi se retrăgea în dezordine pe străzile vecine. Femeile fugeau plângând, cu copiii în brațe. Erau oprite ultimele taxiuri. Li se ofereau două, trei mii de franci ca să părăsească Parisul. Dar șoferii refuzau, nu mai aveau benzină.”

“Dar nu putură să intre în curtea mare încuiată, zăvorâtă, apărată de soldați și de mulțimea presată, strivită de bare. Rămăsaseră acolo până seara, luptându-se zadarnic. În jurul lor, oamenii ziceau: -Asta e! Plecăm pe jos. Rosteau cuvintele astea cu un fel de stupoare deznădăjduită. Se vedea bine că nici ei nu credeau. Se uitau în jur și așteptau minunea: o mașină, un camion, orice i-ar fi dus de acolo. Dar nu apărea nimic. Atunci plecau spre porțile Parisului, ieșeau, își târau bagajele după ei în praf, mergeau, ajungeau în suburbii, apoi la țară și-și ziceau: . Soții Michaud plecaseră și ei tot pe jos. Era o noapte caldă de iunie. În fața lor, o femeie în negru care purta strâmb pe cap, peste părul alb, pălăria cu doliu, se poticnea pe pietrele de pe drum și mormăia, cu gesturi de nebună: -Rugați-vă ca fuga noastră să n-aibă loc iarna... Rugați-vă!... Rugați-vă!”