Such Is My Beloved
CRITIQUE | QUOTES
First editionFirst publication
1934
Literature form
Novel
Genres
Literary
Writing language
English
Author's country
Canada
Length
approx. 50,500 words
Notable lines
The most eager young priest at the Cathedral was Father Stephen Dowling.
— First line
"You have a good time talking about praying for us, don't you, but prayers won't pay for our room, prayers won't help me get my hair curled. You can't eat prayers. How do you think we're going to live? Did you ever stop to figure that out?"
I know many respectable women in the parish enjoying marriages of convenience and I know they're just as low in the scale as these girls. I mean when you think of the girls hunting around the streets here and the young men and the married men going to them because of their secret passion and their lust, it looks almost as if the girls, even here in my own parish, were in a way doing some good—in a way, had a spiritual value.
Father Dowling felt suddenly that he loved the whole neighborhood, all the murmuring city noises, the street cries of newsboys, the purring of automobiles and rumble of heavy vehicles, the thousand separate sounds of everlasting motion, the low, steady, and mysterious hum that was always in the air, the lights in windows, doors opening, rows of street lights and fiery flash of signs, the cry of night birds darting around the Cathedral and the soft low laugh of lovers strolling in the side streets on the first spring nights. He felt he would rather be here in the city and at the Cathedral than any place else on earth, for here was his own home in the midst of his own people.
There was a peace within him as he watched the calm, eternal water swelling darkly against the one faint streak of light, the cold night light on the skyline. High in the sky, three stars were out. His love seemed suddenly to be as steadfast as those stars, as wide as the water, and still flowing within him like the cold smooth waves still rolling on the shore.
— Last lines
CRITIQUE | QUOTES
