208 Quotes by Winston Graham

I said to myself, ‘He has done this and he has paid for it. Isn’t that enough? Is a man to be condemned forever? Why do I go to church and repeat the Lord’s Prayer if I don’t hold to it, if there is no forgiveness? Is our own behavior higher than the founder of Christianity, that we should set a higher standard for others?

Instead, the room, which had seen her grow to maturity, would see her dry up and fade. The gilt mirror in the corner would bear its dispassionate testimony. All the ornaments and furnishings would be her companions through the years to come. And she realized that she would come to hate them, if she didn’t already hate them, as one hates the witnesses of one’s humiliation and futility.

Wishing is like water caught in a dam. You let a little trickle of it escape and you don’t think it’s much, but in no time the trickle has worn a channel and the edges fall in and the water’s doubled and then you get a flood carrying everything away.

The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn’t exist yet. That’s tomorrow! It’s only now that can ever be, at any moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive – and together. We can’t ask more. There isn’t any more to ask.

Life seemed to be teaching him that the satisfaction of most appetites carried in them the seeds of frustration, that it was the common delusion of all men to imagine otherwise.

If we lived for ever, who would look forward eagerly to tomorrow? If there were no darkness, should we so appreciate the sun? Warmth after cold, food after hunger, drink after thirst, sexual love after the absence of sexual love, the fatherly greeting after being away, the comfort and dryness of home after a ride in the rain, the warmth and peace and security of one’s fireside after being among enemies. Unless there were contrast there might be satiety. He.

The waves were shadows, snakes under a quilt, creeping in almost unseen until they emerged in milky ripples at the water’s edge.

Love is not a possession to hoard. You give it away. It’s a blessing and a balm.

When you bring an idealised relationship down to the level of an ordinary one it isn’t necessarily the ordinary one that suffers’.