A Room with a View - E.M. Forster

“About old Mr. Emerson—I hardly know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time---beautiful?”

“Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you form Baedecker. He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true Italy---he does not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found by patient observation.”

"You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be good for both of you.”

“There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.”

“’I shall want to live, I say.’

Leaning on her elbows on the parapet, she contemplated the River Arno, whose roar was suggesting some unexpected melody to her ears.”

“That day she had seemed a typical tourist-shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel. But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and---which he held more precious---it gave her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo Da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life, no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a “story.”

………..…….“He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.”

“’There is a certain amount of kindness, just as there is a certain amount of light,’ he continued in measured tones. ‘We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm---yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.’”