“To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.”

—  Henry James, book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XXIII.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal …" by Henry James?
Henry James photo
Henry James154
American novelist, short story author, and literary critic 1843–1916

Related quotes

John Green photo

“Missing her kept him awake more than the coffee.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 15
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits,
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 696-703

Abby Sunderland photo

“Marianne tried to stay hopeful. But slowly her imagination bulldozed her optimism aside and pushed her mind into a dark place. There, she saw Abby tethered to the boat in her bright red foul-weather gear, being dragged along dead in the sea.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 172

Hartley Coleridge photo

“Thou breeze,
That mak'st an organ of the mighty sea,
Obedient to thy wilful phantasies,
Provoke him not to scorn; but soft and low,
As pious maid awakes her aged sire,
On tiptoe stealing, whisper in his ear
The tidings of the young god's victory.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

Ted Hughes photo

“The Shell

The sea fills my ear
with sand and with fear.

You may wash out the sand,
but never the sound
of the ghost of the sea
that is haunting me.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Source: The Mermaid's Purse: poems by Ted Hughes

“Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Kate Chopin photo

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her with a vague anguish…like a shadow… a mist passing across her soul's summer day.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.”

Sarah Strohmeyer (1950) American writer

Source: Kindred Spirits

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Religion has no limits, and no bounds;—
The vast, the infinite, and the eternal.,
Never from her may Genius separate.
Imagination from its earliest flight,
Past o'er the bounds of life : and the sublime
Is the reflection of divinity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Related topics