You 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.
Joseph Sheridan Le FanuWomen are so enigmatical - some in everything - all in matters of the heart. Don't they sometimes actually admire what is repulsive?
Joseph Sheridan Le FanuThere comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
Joseph Sheridan Le FanuHow 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.
Joseph Sheridan Le FanuNo 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.
Joseph Sheridan Le FanuFor 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.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu