The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.
- - - - - Highlight on Page 66 - - - - -
"I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it, when you're up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You're intoxicated by the boundless space. You feel such a sense of exhilaration that you wouldn't exchange it for all the power and glory in the world. I was reading Descartes the other day. The ease, the grace, the lucidity. Gosh!"
"But Larry," she interrupted him desperately, "don't you see you're asking something of me that I'm not fitted for, that I'm not interested in and don't want to be interested in? How often have I got to repeat to you that I'm just an ordinary, normal girl, I'm twenty, in ten years I shall be old, I want to have a good time while I have the chance. Oh, Larry, I do love you so terribly. All this is just trifling. It's not going to lead you anywhere. For your own sake I beseech you to give it up. Be a man, Larry, and do a man's work. You're just wasting the precious years that others are doing so much with. Larry, if you love me you won't give me up for a dream. You've had your fling. Come back with us to America."
"I can't, darling. It would be death to me. It would be the betrayal of my soul."
- - - - - Highlight on Page 68 - - - - -
She hesitated for an instant, then put it on the finger of her right hand. "It's too large."
"You can have it altered. Let's go to the Ritz bar and have a drink."
"All right."
She was a trifle taken aback that it had all gone so easily. She had not cried. Nothing seemed to be changed except that now she wasn't going to marry Larry. She could hardly believe that everything was over and done with. She resented a little the fact that they hadn't had a terrific scene. They had talked it all over almost as coolly as though they had been discussing the taking of a house. She felt let down, but at the same time was conscious of a slight sense of satisfaction because they had behaved in such a civilized way. She would have given a lot to know exactly what Larry was feeling. But it was always difficult to know that; his smooth face, his dark eyes were a mask that she was aware even she, who had known him for so many years, could not penetrate.
- - - - - Highlight on Page 87 - - - - -
"I thought I needed a rest from books then," he said, "I'd been working from eight to ten hours a day for two years. So I went to work in a coal mine."
"You did what?" I cried.
He laughed at my astonishment, "I thought it would do me good to spend a few months in manual labor. I had a notion it would give me an opportunity to sort my thoughts and come to terms with myself."
- Highlight on Page 98
I couldn't believe he wasn't sincere. I don't know how it occurred to me, but I got the idea somehow that he'd taken on that hard, brutal labor of the mine to mortify his flesh. I thought he hated that great, uncouth body of his and wanted to torture it and that his cheating and his bitterness and his cruelty were the revolt of his will against—oh, I don't know what you'd call it—against a deep-rooted instinct of holiness, against a desire for God that terrified and yet obsessed him.
- - - - - Highlight on Page 116 - - - - -
Henry Maturin at first would not believe that the break was serious, but persuaded himself that it was a plot of the New York brokers to put a quick one over their provincial brethren, and setting his teeth he poured forth money to support the market. He raged against the Chicago brokers who were letting themselves be stampeded by those scoundrels in New York.
He had always prided himself on the fact that none of his smaller clients, widows with settled incomes, retired officers and such like, had ever lost a penny by following his advice, and now, instead of letting them take a loss, he supported their accounts out of his own pocket. He said he was prepared to go broke, he could make another fortune, but he could never hold up his head again if the little people who trusted him lost their all. He thought he was magnanimous; he was only vain.
His great fortune melted and one night he had a heart attack. He was in his sixties, he had always worked hard, played hard, eaten too much and drunk heavily; after a few hours of agony he died of coronary thrombosis.
- - - - - Highlight on Page 171 - - - - -
"My instinct told me I'd be silly to fall in love with him, you know women are very unfortunate, so often when they fall in love they cease to be lovable, and I made up my mind to be on my guard."
- - - - - Highlight on Page 221 - - - - -
I went over to the bed and by the gleam of the lighthouse felt Elliott's pulse. He was dead. I lit the lamp by his bedside and looked at him. His jaw had fallen. His eyes were open and before dosing them I stared into them for a minute. I was moved and I think a few tears trickled down my cheeks. An old, kind friend. It made me sad to think how silly, useless and trivial his life had been. It mattered very little now that he had gone to so many parties and had hobnobbed with all those princes, dukes and counts. They had forgotten him already.
- - - - - Highlight on Page 260 - - - - -
"What are your plans now?"
"I've got a job of work to finish here and then I shall go back to America."
"What to do?"
"Live."
"How?"
He answered very coolly, but with an impish twinkle in his eyes, for he knew very well how little I expected such a reply, "With calmness, forbearance, compassion, selflessness and continence."
- - - - - Highlight on Page 282 - - - - -
She powdered her face and reddened her lips. Then she looked at me reflectively. "Do you think any the worse of me for what I did?"
"Would you care?"
"Strange as it may seem to you, I would. I want you to think well of me?"
I grinned. "My dear, I'm a very immoral person," I answered. "When I'm really fond of anyone, though I deplore his wrongdoing it doesn't make me less fond of him. You're not a bad woman in your way and you have every grace and every charm. I don't enjoy your beauty any the less because I know how much it owes to the happy combination of perfect taste and ruthless determination. You only lack one thing to make you completely enchanting." She smiled and waited. "Tenderness."
- - - - - Highlight on Page 291 - - - - -
For all the persons with whom I have been concerned got what they wanted: Elliott social eminence; Isabel an assured position backed by a substantial fortune in an active and cultured community; Gray a steady and lucrative job, with an office to go to from nine till six every day; Suzanne Rouvier security; Sophie death; and Larry happiness.
(收起)
![[已注销]](http://img3.douban.com/icon/user_normal.jpg)
