Tatevik’s Reviews > Lady Chatterley's Lover > Status Update

What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality.

She had often wondered what Abélard meant, when he said that in their year of love he and Heloise had passed through all the stages and refinements of passion.[…]
The refinements of passion, the extravagances of sensuality! And necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt out the heaviest ore of the body into purity. With the fire of sheer sensuality.

Constance walked dimly on. From the old wood came an ancient melancholy, somehow soothing to her, better than the harsh insen-tience of the outer world. She liked the inwardness of the remnant of forest, the unspeaking reticence of the old trees. They seemed a very power of silence, and yet, a vital presence. They too were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and given a potency of silence.

that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers.
Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.