Maurice (novel)

"He had acted wrongly, and was still being punished- but wrongly because he had tried to get the best of both worlds."

"After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?"

"He had begun rough and gay and somehow factitious, then his voice had died away into sadness as though truth had risen to the surface of the water and was unbearable."

"Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things."

"You care for me a little bit, I do think," he admitted, "but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. You don't worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on."

"I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now - I can't hang about whining for ever- and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?"

"He had always liked his friend's laugh, and at such a moment the soft rumble of it reassured him; it suggested happiness and security."

"They were his last words, because Maurice had disappeared thereabouts, leaving no trace of his presense except a little pile of the petals of the evening primrose, which mourned from the ground like an expiring fire."

"He did not realize that this was the end, without twilight or compromise, that he should never cross Maurice's track again, nor speak to those who had seen him."