Portrait of Jennie Quotes

“What is it which makes a man and a woman know that they, of all other men and women in the world, belong to each other? Is it no more than chance and meeting? no more than being alive together in the world at the same time? Is it only a curve of the throat, a line of the chin, the way the eyes are set, a way of speaking? Or is it something deeper and stranger, something beyond meeting, something beyond chance and fortune? Are there others, in other times of the world, whom we should have loved, who would have loved us? Is there, perhaps, one soul among all others--among all who have lived, the endless generations, from world's end to world's end--who must love us or die? And whom we must love, in turn--whom we must seek all our lives long--headlong and homesick--until the end?”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“Where I come from
Nobody knows;
And where I'm going
Everything goes.
The wind blows,
The sea flows -
And nobody knows.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“How little we have, I thought, between us and the waiting cold, the mystery, death--a strip of beach, a hill, a few walls of wood or stone, a little fire--and tomorrow's sun, rising and warming us, tomorrow's hope of peace and better weather . . . What if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise?”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“She has a look," I said, "of not altogether belonging to today.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“Yellow is the true color of spring, not green; the new grass, the clouds, the misty, sunny air, the sticky buds like little feathers on the trees, all are mixed with yellow tone, with the haze of sun and earth and water. Green is for summer; blue, for fall.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“What trouble we go to, trying to fool people who see right through us anyhow.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“ONE must sometimes believe what one cannot understand. That is the method of the scientist as well as the mystic: faced with a universe which must be endless and infinite, he accepts it, although he cannot really imagine it. For there is no picture in our minds of infinity; somewhere, at the furthermost limits of thought, we never fail to plot its end. Yet—if there is no end? Or if, at the end, we are only back at the beginning again?”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“Summer is the worst time of all to be alone. The earth is warm and lovely, free to go about in; and always somewhere in the distance there is a place where two people might be happy if only they were together. It is in the spring that one dreams of such places; one thinks of the summer which is coming, and the heart dreams of its friend.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“For friends and lovers are quick to wound, quicker than strangers, even; the heart that opens itself to the world, opens itself to sorrow.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“I'm thinking how beautiful the world is, Eben; and how it keeps on being beautiful--no matter what happens to us. The spring comes year after year, for us, or Egypt; the sun goes down in the same green, lovely sky; the birds sing...for us, or yesterday...or for yesterday...or for tomorrow. It was never made for anything but beauty, Eben--whether we lived now, or long ago.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“Once upon a time, not so very long ago, men thought that the earth was flat, and that where earth and heaven met, the world ended. Yet when they finally set sail for that tremendous place, they sailed right through it, and found themselves back again where they had started from. It taught them only that the earth was round.

It might have taught them more.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“How little we have, I thought, between us and the waiting cold, the mystery, death—a strip of beach, a hill, a few walls of wood or stone, a little fire—and tomorrow’s sun, rising and warming us, tomorrow’s hope of peace and better weather”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“We think of God, we think of the mystery of the universe, but we do not think about it very much, and we do not really believe that it is a mystery, or that we could not understand it if it were explained to us. Perhaps that is because when all is said and done, we do not really believe in God. In our hearts, we are convinced that it is our world, not His.
How stupid of us. Yet we are created stupid—innocent and ignorant; and it is this ignorance alone which makes it possible for us to live on this earth, in comfort, among the mysteries. Since we do not know, and cannot guess, we need not bother our heads too much to understand. It is innocence which wakes us each morning to a new day, a fresh day, another day in a long chain of days; it is ignorance which makes each of our acts appear to be a new one, and the result of an exercise of will. Without such ignorance, we should perish of terror, frozen and immobile; or, like the old saints who learned the true name of God, go up in a blaze of unbearable vision.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“We know so little”, I said, “and there’s so much to know. We live by taste and touch; we see only what is under our noses. There are solar systems up there above us, greater than our own; and whole universes in a drop of water. And time stretches out endlessly on every side. This earth, this ocean, this little moment of living, has no meaning by itself. . . Yesterday is just as true as today; only we forget.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“She had said: “How beautiful the world is, Eben. It was never made for anything but beauty — whether we lived now, or long ago.”
We had that beauty together. We never lost it.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“I stared at her, thinking: of course, how would she know about bitterness, how would she know about the artist at all? caught in a mystery for which he must find some answer, both for himself and for his fellow men, a mystery of good and evil, of blossom and rot — the mystery of a world which learns too late, which is the mold, and which the bloom . . .”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“It is innocence which wakes us each morning to a new day, a fresh day, another day in a long chain of days; it is ignorance which makes each of our acts appear to be a new one, and the result of an exercise of will. Without such ignorance, we should perish of terror, frozen and immobile; or, like the old saints who learned the true name of God, go up in a blaze of unbearable vision.”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie

“I don't think I care very much about being rich, Jennie. I just want to paint--and to know what I'm painting. That's what's so hard--to know what you're painting; to reach to something beyond these little, bitter times...”
― Robert Nathan, Portrait of Jennie