Marietta: A Maid of Venice

“Every woman who loves a man and is anxious about him is sure that if she can be alone with him for a moment, he will tell her the truth about his condition. The experience of thousands of years has not taught women that if there is one person in the world from whom a man will try to conceal his ills and aches, it is the woman he loves, because he would rather suffer everything than give her pain””

— F. Marion Crawford

“He looked at her in silent wonder for a moment, happy beyond words to be with her””

— F. Marion Crawford

“There is no such consolation to a born coward as a logical reason for not doing what he is afraid to do””

— F. Marion Crawford

“the half hour, and all that might happen to him before morning. The glorious and triumphant certainty which first love brings to every man when it is first returned, still swelled his heart and filled the air he breathed, so that while breathing deep, he could not breathe enough””

— F. Marion Crawford

“But love itself does not argue. At first it is seen far off, like a beautiful bird of rare plumage, among flowers, on a morning in spring; it comes nearer, it is timid, it advances, it recedes, it poises on swiftly beating wings, it soars out of sight, but suddenly it is nearer than before; it changes shapes, and grows vast and terrible, till its flight is like the rushing of the whirlwind; then all is calm again, and in the stillness a sweet voice sings the chant of peace or the melancholy dirge of an endless regret; it is no longer the dove, nor the eagle, nor the storm that leaves ruin in its track”

— F. Marion Crawford

“To a man, first love is a victory, to a girl it is a sweet wonder, and a joy, and a tender longing, all in one””

— F. Marion Crawford

“The best which a man means to do is generally better than the best he does, and it is perhaps the best he is capable of doing””

— F. Marion Crawford