A Severe Mercy

“So many of the books, the best-loved ones, had been about England, and of course the poems were England itself.”

“That nameless something that had stopped his heart was Beauty.”

“He was suddenly overwhelmed with the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions. But, then — this was awful! — maybe girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life. Shattering!”

“We met angrily in the dead of winter.”

“[Her death] saved our love from perishing in one of the other ways that love could perish. Would I not rather our love go through death than hate?”

“When she was launched, Davy christened her, breaking a bottle of wine against the lovely-curving bow, and crying as the schooner slipped into the water: "Keep us out of the set ways of life!"”

“Christianity has the ring, the feel of unique truth. Of essential truth. By it, life is made full instead of empty, meaningful instead of meaningless.”

“A choice was necessary: and there is no certainty. One can only choose a side. So I — I now choose my side: I choose beauty; I choose what I love. But choosing to believe is believing.”

“But I — I a Christian! I, who had been wont to regard Christians with pitying dislike, must now confess myself to be one.”

“But, though I wouldn't have admitted it, even to myself, I didn't want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted Him approving from a considerable distance.”

“It was a whip-poor-will whistling his liquid song, another one answering in the distance. We sat there a long time, holding hands, as the stars came out. This was the Virginia we loved.”

“Davy, too, was saying farewell to the wind, farewell to the wind and sky, watching it all go, fade away, die — and thanking God. And yet she was human, heart-breakingly human, and she did not want to die.”

“We had had what we had chosen, not business success or scholarly acclaim but a great love.”

“All I could think of was: Of her bones are coral made.”

“As nearly as a lover can do, I was seeing the whole of her — a wholeness I would never lose — and knowing her soul.”

“The future dream charms us because of its timelessness; and I think most of the charm we see in the "good old days" is no less an illusion of timelessness.”

“Sometimes — more precisely, some-not-times — we find "the still point of the turning world". All our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless.”

“We live in time as we live in the air we breathe. And we love the air — who has not taken deep breaths of pure, fresh country air, just for the pleasure of it? How strange that we cannot love time.”

“Instantly I was overwhelmed — by Oxford. The air itself — the familiar mixture of coal smoke and mist.”

“If, indeed, grief is a response to the presence — seeming or real — of the dead, then the end of grief might correspond to some necessary turning away on their part.”