Lawrence Durrell - Mountolive (1958)

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Subconsciously he knew too, that the oriental woman is not a sensualist in the European sense; there is nothing mawkish in her constitution. Her true obsessions are power, politics and possessions - however much she might deny it. The sex ticks on in the mind, but its motions are warmed by the kinetic brutalities of money.

Lawrence Durrell
His profession [diplomacy] — offered him something like a long Jesuitical training in self-deception which enabled him to present an ever more highly polished surface to the world without deepening his human experience [-] for he lived surrounded by his ambitious and sycophantic fellows who taught him only how to excel in forms of address, and the elaborate kindnesses which, in pleasing, pave the way to advancement.

Lawrence Durrell
I've alwayd believed that our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

Lawrence Durrell
Then he saw that she was blind, her face slightly upcast to her companion's in the manner of those whose expressions never fully attain their target - the eyes of another.

Lawrence Durrell
I've always believed that our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

Lawrence Durrell
The confluent smallpox - invented perhaps as the cruellest remedy for human vanity

Lawrence Durrell
In French the truth of passion stood up coldly and cruelly to the scrutiny of human experience. In his own curious phrase he [Pursewarden] had always qualified it as 'an unsniggerable language'.

Lawrence Durrell
Lovers can find nothing to say to each other that has not been said and unsaid a thousand times over. Kisses were invented to translate such nothings into wounds

Lawrence Durrell
Here was Kenilworth now heading the new department concerned with Personnel [-] one of those blank administrative constructs which offered no openings into the world of policy. A dead end. [-] he would soon develop the negative powers of obstruction which always derive from a sense of failure.

Lawrence Durrell
The Copts — the only branch of the Christian Church which was thoroughly integrated into the Orient! But then your good Bishop of Salisbury openly said he considered these oriental Christians as worse than infidels, and your Crusaders massacred them joyfully.

Lawrence Durrell
The artist's work constitutes the only satisfactory relationship he can have with his fellow men since he seeks his real friends among the dead and the unborn.

Lawrence Durrell