Someone at a Distance Quotes

“But Mrs. Brockington, old, alone, almost crippled by rheumatism, had faith and courage. She had more. She had a warm serenity, and when Ellen was with her, she almost had it too. For goodness is catching. Mrs. Brockington was further on the road Ellen wanted to travel, and because Mrs. Brockington had got there, Ellen felt she might get there too.”
― Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance

“She had learnt to wait for the changes and the help that life brings. Life is like the sea, sometimes you are in the trough of the wave, sometimes on the crest. When you are in the trough, you wait for the crest, and always, trough or crest, a mysterious tide bears you forward to an unseen, but certain shore. In”
― Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance

“With love, you don't even need butter on your bread; without it, an elaborate feast is necessary to make you come to the table.”
― Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance

“All those books, all those prayers and she had got nothing from them. When everything went well for her she had been able to pray, she couldn't now. There was such urgency in her present situation that until the pressure was removed she couldn't think about God. She hadn't the patience to pray. It was a shock to her. Surely God was for these times?”
― Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance

“A loved husband is the companion of companions, the supreme sharer, and a happy wife often sounds trivial when she is really sampling and enjoying their mutual and unique confidence. But in doing it, she largely loses her power of independent decision and action. She either brings her husband round to her way of thinking or goes over to his, and mostly she doesn't know or care which it is.”
― Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance

“In the dining-room, where the shutters were closed against the night and the lamps on the tables lit under rosy shades, the old ladies waited to be served. They had read the paper, but Ellen couldn't have come into gentler company. There was no avid curiosity, no malicious speculation, no self-congratulation that such a thing couldn't happen to them, as there might have been among younger women. These women were old, time had softened them, they had learnt something from loss, helplessness, loneliness; they knew that almost anything can happen to anybody. They were kinder than when they were young.

So they tried, without a word, to show Ellen they were glad to have her there; and were almost proud that she should seek refuge among them on this bad day in her life.”
― Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance