Skip to content

Agony Quote by Ann Petry

“All marriages are like this. The component parts are contempt and irritation because we know each other by heart, by rote; we're all graduates of the blab school for double harness. Then he looked at the redgold hair, the sweet curve of the mouth, and thought, Truthlie, because marriage is more…” quote by Ann Petry — Download Open image

““All marriages are like this. The component parts are contempt and irritation because we know each other by heart, by rote; we're all graduates of the blab school for double harness. Then he looked at the redgold hair, the sweet curve of the mouth, and thought, Truthlie, because marriage is more than that. It's part hate, part love. It's remembered agony, and remembered delight.””

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.9 out of 5 (10 ratings)

Agony Art love Contempt Delight Hate Irritation Love Marriage Relationships

More by Ann Petry

“Sometimes I look at my own movies”

Image

A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined.

Image

“This was, by comparison, a safe, secure, clean world. And looking at it, she thought it must be rather pleasant to be able to…

Image

“She held the paper in her hand for a long time, trying to follow the reasoning by which that thin ragged boy had become in the eyes of a reporter a 'burly Negro.' And she decided that it all depended on where you sat how these things looked. If you looked at them from inside the framework of a fat…

“The attendant looked at Camilo, looked at Link, blandly, incuriously. Link thought, In New York all the black boys who go in for what they like to call Caddies also go in for white girls. So this is old hat to him. He figures that if I'm rich enough--numbers or women or rackets of one kind or another--to drive one…

All life goes in a circle, around and around, you started at one place, and then came right back to it again.

Image

“Doesn't the female always take what she wants and at the same time try to hang on to what she already has?”

Image

“She supposed the young colored men of Link's generation couldn't have manners like Mr. Powther's, though she didn't know why. Wars and atom bombs and the fact that there was so much hate in the world might have something to do with it. There were times when she had thought that rudeness was a characteristic of Link's; that other young…

All truly great art is propaganda.

Image

Folks differs, dearie. They differs a lot. Some can stand things that others can't. There's never no way of knowin' how much they can…

Image

Everything you ever had, everything you ever lost. It's all there in the trumpet--pain and hate and trouble and peace and quiet and love.

Image

“The women work because the white folks give them jobs—washing dishes and clothes and floors and windows. The women work because for years now…

Image

Explore all 22 Ann Petry quotes

More Agony quotes

Many Republicans have always reminded me of professional WWF wrestlers. They come into the ring all pumped up and acting like they're invincible and…

Image

“[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range…

Image

As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but let that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure…

Alexander MacLaren

Love masters agony; the soul that seemed Forsaken feels her present God again And in her Father's arms Contented dies away.

Image

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that…

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The cure is in the house, not brought by other hands from distant places, but by its own, in agony and blood.

Image

Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the…

Image

The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers... 'It is escapism, true,' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward…

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me…

Image

One often learns more from ten days of agony than ten years of contentment.

Image

There’s been a problem, a problem eating away at me from the inside out. I’ve become weak, I’ve shown human compassion, and it has weakened me. But no more. Tonight I will once again feast on fear and suffering. My appetite for agony will be awakened. I will once again taste the pain of others. I will feast on the…

Pay special attention to their agony so I might take some pleasure.

Image

Browse all 628 Agony quotes