01c. 1843 ADYou will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
02c. 1843 ADNevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
03c. 1843 ADYou are afraid to die?'Yes, everyone is.'But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structures.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
04c. 1843 ADPlaces change imperceptibly – in detail, at least – a good deal,' said the Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would not go on itself; 'and people too; population shifts – there's an old fellow, sir, they call Death.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
05c. 1843 ADThere is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
06c. 1843 ADI have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
07c. 1843 ADI had first thought of Milly's absurdities, to which, in description, I cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with suppressed laughter. But there was a pitiable and even a melancholy meaning underlying the burlesque. This creature, with no more education than a dairy-maid, I gradually discovered had fine natural aptitudes for accomplishment - a very sweet voice, and wonderfully delicate ear, and a talent for drawing which quite threw mine into the shade. It was really astonishing.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
08c. 1843 ADThus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
09c. 1843 ADYou will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
10c. 1843 ADIn my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
11c. 1843 ADHave not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
12c. 1843 ADI am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
13c. 1843 AD(...) and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you won't look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
14c. 1843 ADYou must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
15c. 1843 ADHow marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long—the care of cares—the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven—and straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive films of care that form upon its surface on mere contact with the upper air and light.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
16c. 1843 ADIf your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
17c. 1843 ADAlthough I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
18c. 1843 ADFor some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
19c. 1843 ADI remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
20c. 1843 ADJusging by the sour glance she threw on me as she said this, I concluded that I represented those 'late changes' to which all the sorrows of the house were referred. I felt unhappy under the ill-will even of this odious old woman, being one of those unhappily constructed mortals who cannot be indifferent when they reasonably ought, and always yearn after kindness, even that of the worthless.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
21c. 1843 ADNo one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey's end.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
22c. 1843 ADBut to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
23c. 1843 ADMademoiselle De Lafontaine – in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic – now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
24c. 1843 ADThe precautions of nervous people re infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them.J. Sheridan Le Fanu / quote ↗
