Lawrence Durrell Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs. They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Dog, Party, Names

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.128, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

• Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Pain, Memories

  8 Copy quote

• No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Long, Rebel, Goes On

  1958 Balthazar, pt.2.

  8 Copy quote

• Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Anxiety, Technique, Poetry Is

  5 Copy quote

• All artists today are expected to cultivate a little fashionable unhappiness.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Artist, Littles, Today

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.86, Faber & Faber

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• Truth is what most contradicts itself.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Truth, Truth Is

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.257, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Secret, Approach, Idleness

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.17, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• I am just a refugee from the long slow toothache of English life. It is terrible to love life so much you can hardly breathe!

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love Life, Long, Breathe

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.273, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love, Growing, Divides

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.352, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• He thought and suffered a good deal but he lacked the resolution to dare--the first requisite of a practitioner.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Firsts, Resolution, Dare

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.23, Faber & Faber

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• after all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we really say we know about a man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Men, Doctors, Soul

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.70, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• Brazil is bigger than Europe, wilder than Africa, and weirder than Baffin Land.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Europe, Land, Brazil

  Letter to Henry Miller, 1948.

  9 Copy quote

• You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Opposites, Matter, Pleasure

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.222, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Memories, Raw Materials, Daily Work

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• Let us define 'man' as a poet perpetually conspiring against himself.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Men, Poet, Conspiring

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.650, Faber & Faber

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• The realisation of one's own death is the point at which one becomes adult.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Adults, Realisation

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.32, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Sorrow is implicit in love as gravitation is implicit in mass.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Sorrow, Mass, Gravitation

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.68, Faber & Faber

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• No history much? Perhaps. Only this ominous Dark beauty flowering under veils, Trapped in the spectrum of a dying style: A village like an instinct left to rust, Composed around the echo of a pistol-shot.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Dark, Echoes, Cities

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “Collected Poems 1931-74”, p.169, Faber & Faber

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• I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Mirrors, Evil, Done

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• I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Night

  Lawrence Durrell (2011). “Bitter Lemons of Cyprus”, p.9, Faber & Faber

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• There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Pain, Self, Doe

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.103, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.

  Lawrence Durrell

  People, Missing, Fever

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.157, Faber & Faber

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• Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Men, Law, Too Late

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.269, Faber & Faber

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• It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Real, Achieve, Refinement

  Lawrence Durrell, Earl G. Ingersoll (1998). “Lawrence Durrell: Conversations”, p.35, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• The sense of truth no matter how subjective is necessary for the experience of beauty.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Beauty, Matter, Subjective

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