Rose Macaulay

“ Young and old, black and white, the delegates stood and walked about the hall, waiting for the session of the League of Nations Assembly to begin. The hum of talk rose up and filled the hall; it was as if a swarm of bees were hiving. What a very great deal, thought Henry, had the human race to say, always! Only the little Japs at the back sat in silent rows, scores and scores of them (for Japanese are no use by ones) , immobile, impassive, with their strange little masks and slanting eyes, waiting patiently for the business of the day to begin. ”

“ For a while they lay silent in the warm sweetness of the hill-top, while the golden light slipped from them, leaving behind it the pure green stillness of the evening; and they looked at one another and speculated on the strange differences of human beings each from each, and the mystery of personality, that tiny point on to which all the age-long accumulated forces of heredity press, so that you would suppose that the world itself could not contain them, and yet they are contained in one small, ordinary soul, which does not break under the weight. ”

“ No good scientist could conceivably be a Potterite, because he's concerned with truth, and the kind of truth, too, that it's difficult to arrive at. Potterism is all for short and easy cuts and showy results. Science has to work its way step by step, and then hasn't much to show for it. It isn't greedy. Potterism plays a game of grab all the time—snatches at success in a hurry.... It's greedy,' repeated Gideon, thinking it out, watching Jane's firm little sun-browned hand with its short square fingers rooting in the sand for shells. ”

“ Lucy looked a touch puzzled, not so utterly the glad welcomer of all arriving things that she had always been.
But for Thomas, the latest arrived thing, she had a glad welcome. Like Peter, she loved all little funny weak things; and Thomas seemed certainly that, as he lay and blinked at the blurred gas and curled his fingers round one of Peter's. A happy, silent person, with doubts, one fancied, as to the object of the universe, but no doubts that there were to be found in it many desirable things. ”

“ There was also the salt smell of the sea, and the Crevequers, and their sand castle. These things, to Betty Crevequer, became suddenly, as Mrs. Venables would have said, very real, very vivid—in a manner all of life. She lay dreamily, her eyes narrowed to slits blue as the sea, absorbing the impression. Worded—but she did not word it now—it was, as she had put it, 'Naples is there, and you and I are out here.' Naples, set pink and white upon her shores, beyond the point, out of the picture, was life; and life, some one had said, was a smelting-furnace, a testing of ultimate values. ”

“ In front of them the Mount rose in a shallowing violet sea.
"My word!" said Barry, and Kay, screwing up his eyes, murmured, "Good old Mount." Gerda's lips parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her dumb.
Into the pale-washed, straggling old village they rode, stabled their bicycles, and went down to the shining evening sands, where now the paved causeway to the Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy between rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks. Bare-footed they trod it, Gerda and Kay in front, Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking and wheeling round them. ”

“ TOLD BY LEILA YORKE CHAPTER I THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY ON THE STAIRS 1
Love and truth are the only things that count. I have often thought that they are like two rafts on the stormy sea of life, which otherwise would swamp and drown us struggling human beings. If we follow these two stars patiently, they will guide us at last into port. Love—the love of our kind—the undying love of a mother for her children—the love, so gloriously exhibited lately, of a soldier for his country—the eternal love between a man and a woman, which counts the world well lost—these are the clues through the wilderness. ”

“ It's quite time you learnt that there's no fighting with whole truths in this life, and all we can do is to seize fragments of truth where we can find them, and use them as best we can. Poor weapons, perhaps, but all we've got. That's how I see it, anyhow.... Well, darling, at least it can't do any harm to try and get children and grown-up people taught to get some understanding of international politics and the ways to keep the peace, or to look upon arbitration as a possible, practical, and natural substitute for war—can it, now? ”

“ Peter sat very still leaning back against the rough white wall, and thought what a pity it all was. What a pity, and what a bore, that one could not do things like other people. Short of being an Urquhart, who could do everything and had everything, whose passing car flamed triumphant and lit the world into a splendid joy, and was approved under investigation with "quite all right"—short of that glorious competence and pride of life, one might surely be an average man, who could walk from San Pietro to Florence without tumbling on the road at dawn. ”