Norah Lofts Quotes & Sayings

Noli me tangere; for Caesar's I am. — Norah Lofts

Perhaps I am the only person who, asked whether she were a witch or not, could truthfully say, "I do not know. I do know some very strange things have happened to me, or through me."
Lady Alice Rowhedge — Norah Lofts

He hadn't wanted to go through life heartsick for something he could not have. — Norah Lofts

He has shamed me, and he'll kill me, but he shan't humble me. — Norah Lofts

I am trying now to be entirely honest. I did actually comfort in the thought that the Devil had, on Strawless Common, defeated God. I much preferred that thought to the thought that God hadn't cared, hadn't helped Robin. I thought all the way back to the story of Eden. God, all-loving, all-wise, had surely wanted people to be happy and healthy and good; it was the Devil who spoiled it all ... and since so many people were miserable and sickly and bad the Devil must indeed by very powerful. The lifeless, voiceless thing, lately a singing boy, which they had cut down and put under a sack in the barn to await an unhallowed cross-road grave seemed to me to prove the power of the Devil.
Lady Alice Rowhedge — Norah Lofts

Better, I thought, never to have been born than this; brought out of nothingness, to labour and strive and back into nothingness again; a bit of fungus on the surface of a splinter of a dying star. — Norah Lofts

Alongside the practical thought something else struggled and, like an escaped butterfly, took wing: the assurance of something wonderful awaiting her. Just around the corner ... — Norah Lofts

Simple people always reduce everything to their own simple measure. — Norah Lofts

Don't worry about it, Borage. I've always been inclined to think that the Apostle Paul was similarly afflicted. He speaks often of a bodily weakness, and men have been at pains to name it, attibuting to him everything from lameness to lung sickness. But I think the clue lies in his experience on the road to Damascus. Tell me, do you see a great light?
Dr. Trudgett — Norah Lofts

Only people of low birth pressed questions likely to embarrass. — Norah Lofts

They set off through the soft lingering light. One cuckoo in the depths of Layer Wood and one in the dense shrubbery of the Dower House were keeping up their eternal question and answer, and in the comparative coolness which had come with the evening all the scents of summer had magnified. — Norah Lofts

Suddenly Damask found herself staring down at the flowers through a dazzle of tears. The words sounded so innocent and so disarming - she remembered that she hadn't wanted to come through the beautiful woods at all; and there was no danger, nothing wrong except the wickedness of her own heart. She looked at Danny's big, brown, work-scarred hands gently gathering the flowers and her love for him was a physical pain. Oh, how she loved him; how she wished that he would ask her to marry him!
Norah Lofts — Norah Lofts

It was not the first time - it was far from the firs time - that Damask had suspected that there was something queer, something quite out of the ordinary about her mind. Most people had minds which dealt with one thought, and then another, one at a time. Hers very often dealt with two, even three, all at the same time.
Damask Greenway from Afternoon of an Autocrat — Norah Lofts