Lawrence Durrell Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Every man is made of clay and diamond, and no woman can nourish both.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Men, Clay, Made

  8 Copy quote

• …I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans

  Lawrence Durrell

  Mean, Islands, Sea

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes”, p.4, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living.

  Lawrence Durrell

  History, Historical, Way

  1978 In The Listener, 20 Apr.

  15 Copy quote

• Art like life is an open secret.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Secret, Life Is

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.361, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Music, Lonely, Loneliness

  Lawrence Durrell (1961). “Clea”

  13 Copy quote

• Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Insult To Injury, Age, Aging

  17 Copy quote

• Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might purprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Heart, Order, Might

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.164, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• They say that if you get bored enough with calamity you can learn to laugh.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Adversity, Laughing, Bored

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.199, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Writing, Energy, Neurosis

  9 Copy quote

• A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Food, Wine, Water

  Lawrence Durrell (1978). “Prospero's cell: a guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra”, Viking Pr

  8 Copy quote

• The memory of man is as old as misfortune

  Lawrence Durrell

  Memories, Men, Misfortunes

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.344, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• Life is like a cucumber. One minute it's in your hand, the next it's up you ass.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Hands, Life Is Like, Cucumbers

  30 Copy quote

• Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Mirrors, Secret, Wish

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.476, Faber & Faber

  13 Copy quote

• I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Memories, Lying, Hair

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.14, Faber & Faber

  12 Copy quote

• A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Wish, Finals, Diaries

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.194, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Gamblers and lovers really play to lose.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Play, Lovers, Loses

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.361, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Children, Land, Landscape

  Lawrence Durrell (1969). “Justine”, Pocket

  14 Copy quote

• Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love Is, Enemy, Warfare

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.231, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• I have been thinking about the girl I met last night in the mirror: dark on the marble-ivory white: glossy black hair: deep suspiring eyes in which one's glances sink because they are nervous, curious, turned to sexual curiosity.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Girl, Eye, Dark

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.51, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• Prohibitions create the desire they were intended to cure.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Desire, Prohibition, Cures

  33 Copy quote

• Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Sex, Psychics, People

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.272, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

• These are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their own kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Memories, Ocean, Unique

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.42, Faber & Faber

  13 Copy quote

• Religion is simply art bastardized out of all recognition.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Recognition

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.696, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• The national characteristics... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Wine, Paris, Glasses

  12 Copy quote

• Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Travel, Artist, Journey

  Lawrence Durrell (2011). “Bitter Lemons of Cyprus”, p.6, Faber & Faber

  18 Copy quote

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