In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself. It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and..
One of the good things about a Catholic church is that it isn't respectable," she had told Richard. "You can find anyone in it, from duchesses to whores, from tramps to kings."
I wish I knew when I was going to die,' ninety-six-year-old Dame Frances Anne often said, 'I wish I knew.' 'Why, Dame?' 'Then I should know what to read next.
On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages. Joss and I felt guilty; we were still at the age when we thought being greedy was a childish fault and this gave our guilt a tinge of hopelessness because, up to then, we had believed that as we grew older our faults would disappear, and none of them did.
Why do religions have edges?" asked Teresa.... "God is here," said the printed text on the wall. "Yes," said Sophie. "But," she asked, "isn't He everywhere? Then why do they make Him little?" And she thought of those edges, pressing against each other, hurting, jarring, offending, barring one human being from another, shutting away their understanding and their souls. Yet if you have no edges, thought Sophie, how lonely, how drifting, you..
Towards four o'clock the dew fell, and she smelled a gust of sweetness from the roses and a paleness showed in the sky to the East. It was cold; the wetness was cold on her hands and she felt her skirt dragging around her ankles... the light spread, there were long lines of cloud in the sky and presently above them the outline of the snow peaks appeared, cold and hard as if they were made of iron; they turned from black to grey to white whi..
and as she stood on the Ashford platform waiting for the small train to come in, she seemed already separated from the people around her. Tomorrow I shall not be among you anymore; not of you but mysteriously still with you, thought Philippa. As Lady Abbess of Brede had said, "People think we renounce the world. We don't. We renounce its ways but we are still very much in it and it is very much in us."
Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by; children who do not understand this often do wrong things, and then the dolls are hurt and abused and lost; and when this happens dolls cannot speak, nor do anything except be hurt and abused and lost. If you have any dolls, you should remember that.
She made a creche outside the Inn. The natives thought it was wonderful, and Sister Honey was gratified by their numbers. Why have the devils with wings come to mock at the poor baby?' asked the children, pointing to the angels. The baby is the Number One Lord Jesus Christ,' Ayah told them. But he hasn't any clothes on! Aren't they going to give Him anything? Not a little red robe? Not a bit of melted butter?'
Harriet was silent, thinking, and then she said, "It is too hard to be a person. You don't only have to go on and on. You have to be--" she looked for the word she needed and could not find it. Then, "You have to be tall as well," said Harriet."
Harriet told her, 'Captain John was brave. He stayed there in the battle until his leg was shot off.' Victoria's brown eyes rested thoughtfully on Captain John. "Why didn't he stay until the other leg was shot off?' she asked. But he still seemed to like Victoria best."
It is strange and cold. I can feel it through the box" said Miss Flower and she cried, "No one will understand us or know what we want. Oh no one will understand us again!" But Miss Happiness was more hopeful and more brave. "I think they will,"she said. "How will they?" "Because there will be some little girl who is clever and kind." "Will there be?" said Miss Flower longingly. "Yes." "Why will there be?" "Because there always has been," s..
And you needn't worry about being useful,' said Dame Ursula. 'When you have become God's in the measure He wants, He, Himself, will know how to bestow you on others.' She was quoting St Basil. Then her face grew wistful, '"Unless He prefer, for thy greater advantage, to keep thee all to himself." That does happen to a few people. Yet, paradoxically, they have the greatest influence."
Perhaps it was the pulling up of her stakes, or claims, to her private loves, renouncing them, that had made room for these people in a kind of universal love, without any claims.
My nation, as all nations, is becoming a land without peace, without thought, without mind, Madam Abbess. We are suffocating our spirits in commercial and material things. This is not envy," said Mr. Konishi earnestly. "I am a rich man, with much business, so I have succeeded in all these things, but I know that they are empty."
I think there are only two ways to live in this place,' said Sister Philippa, 'you must either live like Mr Dean or like the Sunnyasi; either ignore it completely or give yourself up to it.
The greengages had a pale blue bloom, especially in the shade, but in the sun the flesh showed amber through the clear green skin; if it were cracked the juice was doubly warm and sweet.