“Do try to remember this: even the world's not so black as it is painted"-Valerie to Stephen (pg. 408)”

“So now Stephen must actually learn at first hand hwo straight can run the path of true love, in direct contradiction to the time-honoured proverb. Must realize more clearly than ever, that love is only permissible to those who are cut in every respect to life's pattern.”

“But her eyes would look cold, though her voice might be gentle, and herhand when it fondled would be tentative, unwilling. The hand would bemaking an effort to fondle, and Stephen would be conscious of thateffort. Then looking up at the calm, lovely face, Stephen would be filledwith a sudden contrition, with a sudden deep sense of her ownshortcomings; she would long to blurt all this out to her mother, yetwould stand there tongue-tied, saying nothing at all.”

“The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth. ”

“But her mother had looked at her curiously, gravely, puzzled by this creature who seemed all contradictions - at one moment so hard, at another so gentle, gentle to tenderness, even. Anna had been stirred, as her child had been stirred, by the breath of the meadowsweet under the hedges; for in this they were one, the mother and daughter, having each in her veins the warm Celtic blood that takes note of such things - could they only have divined it, such simple things might have formed a link between them.”

“Outrageous...that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort.”

“And so blinded was she by those gleams of glory which the stars fling into the eyes of young lovers, that she saw perfection where none existed..." p146”