Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.
Lawrence DurrellRead
She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complexity of loving someone who is beautiful yet untrustworthy, highlighting the conflict between desire and morality.
In this quote, Lawrence Durrell captures the paradox of falling for someone whose beauty is overshadowed by their moral ambiguity. The narrator expresses regret over the time spent seeking rationalizations for their lover's questionable actions instead of fully embracing the relationship as it is. This acknowledgment of love's complicated nature illustrates how our judgments can cloud our experiences, and how sometimes, one must accept the imperfections of a beloved to truly appreciate the moments shared.
Themes
LoveBeautyTrustMoralityRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
During a talk about the complexities of love and trust, this quote can exemplify the challenges people face in romantic relationships.
More from Lawrence Durrell
All quotes →I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.
Lawrence DurrellRead
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.
Lawrence DurrellRead
The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
Lawrence DurrellRead
The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.
Lawrence DurrellRead
Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
Lawrence DurrellRead
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Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me.
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