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
Similar quotes
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
Joseph AddisonRead
Don't you need a fountain of love that won't run dry? You'll find one on a stone-cropped hill outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus hangs, cross-nailed and thorn-crowned. When you feel unloved, ascend this mount. Meditate long and hard on heaven's love for you.
Max LucadoRead
Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Love is the veil between lover and lover.
Khalil GibranRead
When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God's love for us.
Frederick BuechnerRead
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Christopher MorleyRead