The Enchanted April

by Elizabeth von Arnim

How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again – not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organization, but privately important – just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn’t seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one – oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!

Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful…

how could a man made in God’s image behave so, and be fitted for better things she was sure, with his youth, his attractiveness and his brains.

All the more deplorable that he should allow himself to be infatuated by a mere outside, and waste any of his strength, any of his peace of mind, hanging round just a woman-thing. If only he could see right through her, see through all her skin and stuff, he would be cured, and she might go on sitting undisturbed on this wonderful night by herself.

all the loneliness of age flashing upon her, the loneliness of having outstayed one’s welcome in the world, of being in it only on sufferance, the complete loneliness of the old childless woman who has failed to make friends.

It did seem that people could only be really happy in pairs – any sorts of pairs, not in the least necessarily lovers, but pairs of friends, pairs of mothers and children, of brothers and sisters –