A Woman Appeared to Me Quotes

“She embodies all the melancholy of autumn. She has learned to cherish with mournful tenderness a past she dares not remember.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“I have loved to the limit of my strength. No one has a right to ask more of any human being.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“You yourself are the bizarre flower of some unknown dream.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“She smiled at me, and I felt a sudden burning tenderness for this creature so like fruit and roses. I desired her like blue water at dawn.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“I adore fairy stories. And I still have the wistful spirit of a child that listens wide-eyed to the marvellous tales told over and over during long winter evenings.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“Friendship is more dangerous than love, since its roots are stronger and go deeper than the roots of love. The anguish of friendship is more bitter than the anguish of love. Certain souls love friendship as others love love; they suffer through friendship as others through love. They have in their lives only one friendship as others have but a single love. It is when they lose friendship that they despair hopelessly.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“Friendship is more dangerous than love, since its roots are stronger and go deeper than the roots of love. The anguish of friendship is more bitter than the anguish of love. Certain souls love friendship as others love love; they suffer through friendship as others through love, They have in their lives only one friendship as others have but a single love. It is when they lose friendship that they despair hopelessly.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“How should I receive her when she appeared? I would say nothing, I would walk toward her and stare into the depths of her eyes at her cruel blonde soul. She would be overcome by my silence and my calm. Then, coldly, resolutely, I would strangle her. That would be ugly, brutal, savage, but it would be a brief nightmare, and in the joy of the mystic murder, I would stretch her out on the divan covered in the green of a mossy bank. I would spread about her head the halo of her pale hair. I would fill her hands with white lilies and scatter her body with her favorite roses-white with a tinge of green. She would slumber, only a bit more pale than in her regular sleep. And I would love her in that superhuman hour more than any other being had ever dared to love. That would be madness with its exaltations and its terrors and its aftermath. I would watch beside her until dawn. I would see the taper-flames waver. The deep blue of midnight would fill the corners with shadow. Vally's lids would grow strangely blue. And I would shout aloud as a man does when drunk: I have killed her! Then she would remain forever my virgin Priestess. She would be the pure whiteness of my dreams, the Inaccessible, the Untarnishable. I would have saved her in saving myself.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me

“I believe that the Unutterable and the Incomprehensible are two faces of a double idea, a hermaphrodite idea. Everything that is ugly, unjust, fierce, base, emanates from the Male Principle.
Everything unbearably lovely and desirable emanates from the Female Principle. The two principles are equally powerful and hate one another incurably. In the end, one will exterminate the other, but which will be the
final victor? That riddle is the perpetual anguish of all souls. We hope in
silence for the decisive triumph of the Female Principle, the Good and the
Beautiful, over the Male, that is, over Bestial Force and Cruelty.”
― Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me