Relative Fortunes Quotes

“Americans seem to think if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls, something intelligent will result”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“There’s always some devil of doubt to whisper your worst fears in your ear.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“always unwavering, or”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“As difficult as financial freedom was for a woman to achieve, sexual freedom seemed even more elusive.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“She’d lived all her life in money-lit radiance. Shadows now taught her the value of each dollar’s tiny flame; what would she choose to illumine in her new dim world?”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“Was independence a luxury reserved for the wealthy? With money of her own, freedom to live as she chose had been a privilege, she now saw, not the simple choice she’d so blithely pronounced it.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“Sometimes death is the loudest voice you have.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“Nothing but a man's honor and good fortune stood between his wife and hardship.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“The mysterious story of Naomi's death was not a story at all, but a tangled sequence of furtive actions by different players for different reasons.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“She recalled Willard Wright's curdling disdain for democracy, for its trust that the larger the aggregate of fools, the better the chance of collective wisdom.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“Poor Naomi. I don't know which breaks my heart more, the way she died or seeing how she lived.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“As yesterday's turmoil had reminded her, her education had been expensive but haphazard and "female" - meant to breed appreciation more than inquiry, competence more than command.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“All impulse to tears had passed. This was too important for self-pity. Marriage or employment? It came down to a choice between pragmatics and principles, between comfort and dignity.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“Happy families attracted visitors; warring ones repelled them.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“Beautiful books could be like nursing infants, handy for ensuring solitude: on glimpsing a bibliophile in commune with a book, most people smiled and tiptoed the other way.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“But downed gin and a swift getaway were not to be.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“woman’s fingers twitched in Julia’s left hand. In a rattle of bracelets, she jerked it toward her bosom. Julia twisted to ease the angle of her elbow, pulled painfully toward a gullible nest of grief and crepe de chine. The woman began to cry.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“younger man rose from beside Glennis’s sister Vivian with a sad smile that suggested he understood the ways of the world but loved it anyway. He looked to be a professional man of some sort, perhaps a promising scholar or judge, the kind of man whose easy manner and handsome face encouraged trust and caused young girls to giggle. Something about his earnest yet worldly smile also made Dr. Winterjay look, eerily, a bit like Julia’s beau back in London. David too could both admire and tease in the same glance, inviting one into the intimate game that was modern gallantry.”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes

“[The suffragette] is a woman who has stupidly carried her envy of certain of the superficial privileges of men to such a point that it takes on the character of an obsession. . . . What these virtuous beldames actually desire in their hearts is . . . that the franchise of dalliance be extended to themselves.—H. L. Mencken, 1922”
― Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes