"Love has no age, no limit, and no death." (indian summer of a forsyte: II)

I didn't care whether I lived or died. When you're like that, Fate ceases to want to kill you. (indian summer of a forsyte: II)

Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was _real_ tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything. Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and leave something in your Will. (indian summer of a forsyte: III)

A marvellous cruelly strong thing was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its multitude of forms and its beating vitality. (indian summer of a forsyte: V)

To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience a young man can go through. (book II: in chancery: part I: chapter II: exit a man of the world)

"People who don't _live_ are wonderfully preserved." (book II: in chancery: part I: capter VIII: jolyon prosecutes trusteeship)

Passing into the picture gallery, as it was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window. She came towards him saying: "I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden. I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon." "You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that impossible. I was just thinking of you." Irene smiled. And it was as if something shone through; not mere spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring. "History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was for ever. Well, it isn't. Only aversion lasts." Jolyon stared at her. Had she got over Bosinney at last? "Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a natural product of the nerves, and we don't change _them._" "I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me. He said a thing that frightened me. He said: 'You are still my wife'!" "What!" ejaculated Jolyon. "You ought not to live alone." And he continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral. (book II: in chancery: part I: chapter XIII: jolyon finds out where he is)

From where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in blossom. Nothing in Nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in blossom; and his heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower again. Spring! Decidedly no man ought to have to die while his heart was still young enough to love beauty! (book III: to let: part I: chapter III: at robin hill)

In a homeopathic age, when boy and girls were co-educated, and mixed-up in early life till sex was almost abolished, Jon was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at Robin Hill with boy friends, or his parents alone. He had never, therefore, been inoculated against the germs of love by small doses of the poison. (book III: to let: part I: chapter III: at robin hill)

There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. (book III: to let: part I: chapter IV: the mausoleum)

"I love all kinds of beauty," went on Fleur, "when it's exciting. I don't like Greek things a bit." "What! Not Euripedes?" "Euripedes? Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long. I think beauty's always swift. I like to look at _one_ picture, for instance, and then run off. I can't bear a lot of things together. Look!" She held up her blossom in the moonlight. "That's better than all the orchard, I think." And, suddenly, with her other hand, she caught Jon's. "Of all the things in the world, don't you think caution's the most awful? Smell the moonlight!" She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that of all things in the world caution was the worst, and bending over, kissed the hand which held his. "That's nice and old-fashioned," said Fleur calmly. "You're frightfully silent, Jon. Still I like silence when it's swift." (book III: to let: part I: chapter VII: fleur)

We've often talked about love being a spoil-sport; well, that's all tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it, my dear, the better for you. (book III: to let: part I: chapter VII: fleur)

One of the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited, like seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel dancey and soft at the same time, with a funny sensation--like a continual first sniff of orange-blossom--just above your stays.(book III: to let: part I: chapter VII: fleur)

She spoke of dogs, and the way people treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would like to flog people who did that. Jon was astonished to find her so humanitarian. (book III: to let: part I: chapter VIII: idyll on grass)

"It's their sense of property," he said, "which makes people chain things. The last generation thought of nothing but property; and that's why there was the War." (book III: to let: part I: chapter VIII: idyll on grass)

Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born old and grew younger year by year, we should understand how things happen, and drop all our cursed intolerance. (book III: to let: part I: chapter X: trio)

That "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with extinction. (book III: to let: part I: chapter XI: duet)

A philosopher when he has all that he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not. (book III: to let: part II: chapter II: fathers and daughters)

Youth only recognizes Age by fits and starts. (book III: to let: part II: chapter III: meetings)

The War was bad for manners, sir--it was bad for manners. (book III: to let: part II: chapter III: meetings)

A Forsyte is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any situation. (book III: to let: part II: chapter VIII: the bit between the teeth)

You know, I believe each of us only has about one or two people who can see the best that's in us, and bring it out. (book III: to let: part II: chapter X: decision)

"The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast malady--the fixed idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes turned inward to its own light, oblivious to all other stars. Those with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying super-tax, on remaining Ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious objection, Greek roots, Church dogma, paradox and superiority to everybody else, with other forms of ego-mania--all are unstable compared with him or her whose fixed idea is the possession of some her or him. (book III: to let: part III: chapter V: the fixed idea)

An unhappy marriage [...] can play such havoc with other lives besides one's own. (book III: to let: part III: chapter VI: desperate)

Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love. (book III: to let: part III: chapter VI: desperate)

After all was said and done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and gone tomorrow" spirit. (book III: to let: part III: chapter VII: embassy)

Fleur smiled bitterly. "Tell me, didn't [Irene] spoil your life too?" June looked up. "Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things happen, but we bob up." (book III: to let: part III: chapter X: fleur's wedding)

As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give her daughter a good hug. (In Chancery)