Betrayal and Disappointment

A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at bottom comes up." Epigrams and Interludes, Section 79

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.

The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned, pricks most deeply and draws more blood.

Never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart.

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.

Love . . . dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source, it dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illnesses and wounds, it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings, but never a natural death. Every lover should be brought to trial as the murderer of his own love.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

We admit that when the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible we crucified it.

WHEN A SINISTER PERSON MEANS TO BE YOUR ENEMY, THEY ALWAYS START BY TRYING TO BECOME YOUR FRIEND.

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

Latet anguis in herba.

That, Sire, is a question of dates.

Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!

O what a tangled web we weave,

They shift the moving toyshop of their heart.

… La belle dame sans merci

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

An inconstant woman, tho’ she has no chance to be very happy, can never be very unhappy.

An open foe may prove a curse,

How happy could I be with either,