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A person can’t have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.
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“A person can’t have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.”

Kate Chopin

Source
The Kiss (Chopin)
Date
1895
Meaning

Meaning of “A person can’t have everything in this world;…”

The narrator closes with dry irony after Nathalie secures the wealthy marriage she wanted but loses the romantic attention she also expected to keep.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“The Kiss,” 1895, represented by Wikisource. This is ironic narrator commentary on Nathalie’s calculated choices and disappointment; it is literary satire about desire, money and relationships rather than prescriptive relationship advice.

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“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”

John Galsworthy · Indian Summer of a Forsyte · 1918
Meaning & context

Irene answers an older man’s skepticism by insisting that love is not confined by age and does not simply vanish when a person or relationship passes away.

Source details

Indian Summer of a Forsyte, represented in Project Gutenberg #2594. Irene says the line to old Jolyon while speaking about her dead lover; it is emotionally charged fictional dialogue, and the surrounding conversation immediately gives old Jolyon a more ironic response.

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Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
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“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.”

E. M. Forster · Howards End · 1910
Meaning & context

Forster summarizes Margaret’s ideal of bringing separated parts of life into relationship, especially practical intellect and emotional connection.

Source details

Howards End, Chapter XXII, Project Gutenberg #2946. The narrator summarizes Margaret’s hope of reconciling “the prose and the passion” in Henry with “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.” The sentence belongs to the novel’s thematic and character context rather than serving as a complete formula for every relationship.

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No human being is sole master of his fate when he has united it with another’s.
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“No human being is sole master of his fate when he has united it with another’s.”

Ellen Key · Love and Marriage · 1911
Voice: Authorial / signed preface voice · Ellen Key (translated authorial voice)
Meaning & context

Key emphasizes interdependence in intimate partnership: once lives are joined, each person’s choices and development partly affect the other’s future.

Source details

Love and Marriage, represented by Project Gutenberg #57592, English edition copyright 1911, translated from Swedish by Arthur G. Chater. The sentence appears in Key’s historical discussion of fidelity, personality and reciprocal development in love; it is early-twentieth-century social philosophy, not relationship therapy.

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Do! Why, if you love him, you must tell him so, and give him your whole life-long faith and affection.
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“Do! Why, if you love him, you must tell him so, and give him your whole life-long faith and affection.”

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik · Olive: A Novel · 1850
Voice: Fictional character · Olive Rothesay
Meaning & context

Olive argues that genuine love should be communicated openly and joined to lasting loyalty rather than hidden behind silence.

Source details

Olive: A Novel, Chapter XI, Project Gutenberg #22121. Olive Rothesay tells Sara that if she loves Charles she should tell him so and give him her ‘whole life-long faith and affection’ while responding to Sara's first love-letter. This is fictional character counsel inside a nineteenth-century courtship plot rather than Craik autobiography or universally applicable relationship advice.

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Men are but children of a larger growth;
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“Men are but children of a larger growth;”

John Dryden · All for Love · 1677
Voice: Fictional character · Dolabella
Meaning & context

Dolabella compares adult appetite and instability with childhood, using the maxim to criticize desires that remain changeable despite age.

Source details

All for Love, represented by Project Gutenberg #2062. Dolabella speaks the line while reflecting on Antony’s passion and his own conflicting attraction to Cleopatra. It is dramatic character speech inside a tragedy, not Dryden autobiography or a universal developmental claim.

Source identified
The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.
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“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.”

Blaise Pascal · The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal · posthumous
Meaning & context

Human judgment includes forms of intuition, feeling, and commitment that cannot always be reduced to explicit logical argument.

Source details

Pensées; Pascal contrasts forms of knowing associated with the heart and with discursive reason.