And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own - the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system… - E. M. Forster

It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.

For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or — to put the thing less cynically — we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice. Phillip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind.

Had she only realized that it is only hypocrites who cannot forgive hypocrisy, whereas those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others – then the bitter flow of her thoughts might have been stopped and the catastrophe averted. But it was not conceivable to her that he should forgive – or that she should accept forgiveness, for to her forgiveness meant a triumph of one person over another.