Zoe Akins

"I am the wind that wavers, You are the certain land; I am the shadow that passes Over the sand."

"The Greeks had a word for it."

"To accuse is so easy that it is infamous to do so where proof is impossible!"

"My life is like water that has gone over the dam and turned no mill wheels. Here I am, not happy, but not unhappy, as my days run on to the sea, idly—but not too swiftly—for I love living."

"Englishmen are like that. They love life more and value it less than any other people in the world."

"Like a fool I thought I was the arbiter of her destiny; and all the time Fate had happier plans for her."

"My cousin Cleofante does not believe in inspiration. She shuns the false energy of all stimulants, even those of criticism and sympathy, when she sets herself to a task. What she does, she does alone—unencouraged, unadvised, unmoved. She has a man’s broad and vital technique, and a man’s ability for thinking straight and far. For years I have watched her work,—coldly, intelligently, solely with the power of her brain,—achieving effects that are in no way miracles, but are matters of technique and deliberation."

"Work alone qualifies us for life, Sentoni. It is much more exquisite to be blown from the tree as a flower than to be shaken down as a shriveled and bitter fruit."

"... there's a great strangeness about love. ... Yes, I'm very sure that love is the strangest thing in the world—much stranger than death—or—or just life."

"It's all right to tell a wife the brutal truth, but you've got to go sort of easy with your lady-love."

"Shutting one's eyes is an art, my dear. I suppose there's no use trying to make you see that—but that's the only way one can stay married."

"This world is a very unsafe place. It's all shifting sands, Ned. Shifting sands and changing winds."

"TILLERTON: "To him that hath it shall be given—" She hath ... that's all. That's greatness. PRESCOTT: One sort of greatness, maybe. TILLERTON: Even the great can have only their own sort of greatness. PRESCOTT: And it's often only that they're great sponges. TILLERTON: Often, yes, or great roses for whose blooming the trees have been pruned and stripped. But they make the beauty of the world and that's enough."

"The success haters. ... That's what I call them—the people who have never got what they want and turned sour on everybody who has. The world's full of them. ... As soon as you've made good they begin to watch for you to fail. ..."

"And I wonder if peace is enough for any man. ..."

"No one can ever help loving anyone."

"Forgetting is the cost Of living cheerfully."

"The nostalgia— not of memories But of what has never been!"

"So much do I love wandering, So much I love the sea and sky, That it will be a piteous thing In one small grave to lie!"

"And they shall know that in the ordering Of every world to come the law shall read That he who dares be lawless wears the wing Of bird and prophet and his light shall lead On through the darkness to eventual light, To undiscovered wealth, to newer need. ..."

"Mine was a love so exquisite that I Rather than watch it wither chose to die: So dress my grave, O friend, with no poor flower Which in your quiet garden blooms an hour!"

"And have we lost the right To look on a blooming bough Without remembering how Once with high promising We were a part of spring— We who are now the dead Leaves of other years strewn where flowers spread?"

"I know not where I go; I scarcely feel The menacing fatigue about my feet, The skies that scourge, the distances that cheat, the constant wounds that never hurt nor heal."

"Indifferent to all the fun of chance I watched black spiders of inertia spin The far-flung web which I was strangling in."

"In all my locked-up songs No one but you belongs."