Tender is the Night Quotes

Quote 1: "[A] bald man in a monocle and a pair of tights, his tufted chest thrown out, his brash navel sucked in, was regarding her attentively." Book 1, Chapter 1, pg. 5

Quote 2: "[S]o that while Rosemary was a 'simple' child she was protected by a double sheath of her mother's armor and her own - she had a mature distrust of the trivial, the facile and the vulgar." Book 1, Chapter 3, pg. 13

Quote 3: "You're the only girl I've seen for a very long time that actually did look like something blooming." Book 1, Chapter 4, pg. 22

Quote 4: "so green and cool that the leaves and petals were curled with tender damp." Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 25

Quote 5: "[H]e opened the gate to his amusing world. So long as they subscribed to it completely, their happiness was his preoccupation, bit at the fist flicker of doubt as to its all-inclusiveness he evaporated before their eyes, leaving little communicable memory of what he had said or done." Book 1, Chapter 6, pg. 28

Quote 6: "[T]he moment when the guests had been daringly lifted above conviviality into the rarer atmosphere of sentiment, was over before it could be irreverently breathed, before they had half realized it was there." Book 1, Chapter 7, pg. 34

Quote 7: "the too obvious appeal, the struggle with an unrehearsed scene and unfamiliar words." Book 1, Chapter 8, pg. 39

Quote 8: "[O]f course it's done at a certain sacrifice - sometimes they seem just rather charming figures in a ballet, and worth the attention you five a ballet, but it's more than that - you'd have to know the story. Anyhow Tommy is one of those men that Dick's passed along to Nicole." Book 1, Chapter 10, pg. 43

Quote 9: "She illustrated very simple principles, containing in herself her own doom, but illustrated them so accurately that there was grace in the procedure, and presently Rosemary would try to imitate it." Book 1, Chapter 12, pg. 55

Quote 10: "Indeed, he had made a quick study of the whole affair, simplifying it always until it bore a faint resemblance to one of his own parties." Book 1, Chapter 13, pg. 59

Quote 11: "He knew that there was passion there, but there was no shadow of it in her eyes or on her mouth; there was a faint spray of champagne on her breath. She clung nearer desperately and once more he kissed her and was chilled by the innocence of her kiss, by the glance that at the moment of contact looked beyond him out into the darkness of the night, the darkness of the world." Book 1, Chapter 15, pg. 63

Quote 12: "The enthusiasm, the selflessness behind the whole performance ravished her, the technic of moving many varied types, each as immobile, as dependent on supplies of attention as an infantry battalion as dependent on rations, appeared so effortless that he still had pieces of his own most personal self for everyone." Book 1, Chapter 18, pg. 77

Quote 13: "[T]he shots had entered into all their lives: echoes of violence followed them out onto the pavement where two porters held a post-mortem beside them as they waited for a taxi." Book 1, Chapter 19, pg. 85

Quote 14: "made an exit that she had learned young, and on which no director had ever tried to improve." Book 1, Chapter 25, pg. 109

Quote 15: "And Lucky Dick can't be one of those clever men; he must be less intact, even faintly destroyed. If life won't do it for him it's not a substitute to get a disease, or a broken heart, or an inferiority complex, though it'd be nice to build out some broken side till it was better than the original structure." Book 2, Chapter 1, pg. 116

Quote 16: "They said that you are a doctor, but so long as you are a cat it is different. My head aches so, so excuse this walking there like a ordinary with a white cat will explain, I think." Book 2, Chapter 2, pg. 122

Quote 17: "I am slowly coming back to life...I wish someone were in love with me like boys were ages ago before I was sick. I suppose it will be years, though, before I could think of anything like that." Book 2, Chapter 2, pg. 124

Quote 18: "We were just like lovers--and then all at once we were lovers--and ten minutes after it happened I could have shot myself--except I guess I'm such a Goddamned degenerate I didn't have the nerve to do it." Book 2, Chapter 3, pg. 129

Quote 19: "God, am I like the rest after all?" Book 2, Chapter 4, pg. 133

Quote 20: "A woman never knows/ What a good man she's got/ Till after she turns him down." Book 2, Chapter 5, pg. 136

Quote 21: "The weakness of the profession is its attraction for the man a little crippled and broken." Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 137

Quote 22: "Nicole's world had fallen to pieces, but it was only a flimsy and scarcely created world." Book 2, Chapter 7, pg. 143

Quote 23: "the delight on Nicole's face--to be a feather again instead of a plummet, to float and not to drag." Book 2, Chapter 8, pg. 149

Quote 24: "And if I don't know you're the most attractive man I ever met you must think I am still crazy. It's my hard luck, all right--but don't pretend that I don't know--I know everything about you and me." Book 2, Chapter 9, pg. 154

Quote 25: "As an indifference cherished, or left to atrophy, becomes an emptiness, to this extent he had learned to become empty of Nicole, serving her against his will with negations and emotional neglect." Book 2, Chapter 11, pg. 168

Quote 26: "We own you, and you'll admit it sooner or later. It is absurd to keep up the pretense of independence." Book 2, Chapter 13, pg. 177

Quote 27: "Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves. Now, human respect--you don't call a man a coward or a liar lightly, but if you spend your life sparing people's feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can't distinguish what should be respected in them." Book 2, Chapter 13, pg. 178

Quote 28: "England was like a rich man after a disastrous orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them that he is only trying to get back his self-respect in order to usurp his former power." Book 2, Chapter 16, pg. 195

Quote 29: "Good-by, my father--good-by, all my fathers." Book 2, Chapter 19, pg. 205

Quote 30: "[The actors had] risen to a position of prominence in a nation that for a decade had wanted only to be entertained." Book 2, Chapter 20, pg. 213

Quote 31: "[S]he only cherishes her illness as an instrument of power." Book 3, Chapter 1, pg. 239

Quote 32: "There was some element of loneliness involved--so easy to be loved--so hard to love." Book 3, Chapter 2, pg. 245

Quote 33: "[T]o explain, to patch--these were not natural functions at their age--better to continue with the cracked echo of an old truth in the ears." Book 3, Chapter 2, pg. 256

Quote 34: "Not without desperation he had long felt the ethics of his profession dissolving into a lifeless mass." Book 3, Chapter 3, pg. 256

Quote 35: "If Europe ever goes Bolshevik she'll turn up as the bride of Stalin." Book 3, Chapter 4, pg. 259

Quote 36: "We can't go on like this--or can we?....What do you think?... Some of the time I think its my fault--I've ruined you." Book 3, Chapter 5, pg. 267

Quote 37: "So you ruined me, did you? ...Then we're both ruined..." Book 3, Chapter 5, pg. 273

Quote 38: "She was somewhat shocked at the idea of being interested in another man--but other women have lovers--why not me?" Book 3, Chapter 6, pg. 276

Quote 39: "If she need not, in her spirit, be forever one with Dick as he had appeared last night, she must be something in addition, not just an image on his mind, condemned to endless parades around the circumference of a medal." Book 3, Chapter 6, pg. 277

Quote 40: "So delicately balanced was she between an old foothold that had always guaranteed her security, and the imminence of a leap from which she might alight changed in the very chemistry of blood and muscle, that she did not dare bring the matter into the true forefront of consciousness." Book 3, Chapter 7, pg. 279

Quote 41: "He's not received anywhere anymore." Book 3, Chapter 7, pg. 287

Quote 42: "Either you think--or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you." Book 3, Chapter 7, pg. 290

Quote 43: "No, I'm not really--I'm just a--I'm just a whole lot of different simple people." Book 3, Chapter 8, pg. 292

Quote 44: "Everything Tommy said became part of her forever." Book 3, Chapter 8, pg. 293

Quote 45: "Tangled with love in the moonlight she welcomed the anarchy of her lover." Book 3, Chapter 8, pg. 298

Quote 46: "Then why did you come, Nicole? I can't do anything for you anymore. I'm trying to save myself." Book 3, Chapter 9, pg. 301

Quote 47: "I have never seen women like this sort of women. I have known many of the great courtesans of the world, and for them I have much respect often, but women like these women I have never seen before." Book 3, Chapter 10, Page 306

Quote 48: "You don't understand Nicole. You treat her always as a patient because she was once sick." Book 3, Chapter 11, pg. 308

Quote 49: "When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they put up." Book 3, Chapter 12, pg. 312