Ross Poldark (Poldark, #1)

by Winston Graham

Qualified help was weak and timid. Either you come out dead against the attachment or else help without reservation, without giving the impression of reluctance and disapproval.

The acme of futility was to regret a pleasure that was past, and he had no intention of doing so.

Life seemed to be teaching him that the satisfaction of most appetites carried in them the seeds of frustration, that it was the common delusion of all men to imagine otherwise.

So he found that what he had half despised was not despicable, that what had been for him the satisfaction of an appetite, a pleasant but commonplace adventure in disappointment, owned wayward and elusive depths he had not known before, and carried the knowledge of beauty in its heart.

Someone—a Latin poet—had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, there and then, past and present and to come.