Important Quotations Explained
1. The castle
is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from
the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything!
As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally
a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads
where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But
I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view
I explored further; doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked
and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls
is there an available exit.
The castle is
a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!
2. I was
afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under
the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply
gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling
and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her
lips like an animal. . . . Lower and lower went her head as the
lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about
to fasten on my throat. . . . I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy
and waited—waited with beating heart.
3. You are
a clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold;
but you are too prejudiced. . . . Ah, it is the fault of our science
that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says
there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day
the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which
are yet but the old, which pretend to be young. . . .
4. She still
advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said:—“Come
to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry
or you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”
There
was something diabolically sweet in her tones—something of the tingling
of glass when struck-which rang through the brains even of us who
heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under
a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms.
5. Thus are
we ministers of God's own wish: that the world, and men for whom
His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence
would defame Him. He has allowed us to redeem one soul already,
and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like
them we shall travel toward sunrise; and like them, if we fall,
we fall in good cause.
