Perhaps also Roger felt that were he to take up the cudgels for an argument he might be worsted in the combat, as in such combats success is won by practised skill rather than by truth.
A man who lives much at a club is apt to fall into a selfish mode of life. He is taught to think that his own comfort should always be the first object. A man can never be happy unless his first objects are outside himself. Personal self-indulgence begets a sense of meanness which sticks to a man even when he has got beyond all hope of rescue.
A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.
Had he yielded to the claim, the attack would have been as venomous, and very probably would have come from the same quarter.
In judging of them, he judged leniently; the whole bias of his profession had taught him to think that they were more sinned against than sinning, and that the animosity with which they had been pursued was venomous and unjust; but he had not the less regarded their plight as most miserable.
Blessed are the peace-makers,’ miss, ’for they shall be called the children of God.
It is not what one suffers that kills one, but what one knows that other people see that one suffers.
It is said by many who have had to deal with boys, that certain among them claim and obtain ascendancy by the spirit within them; but I doubt whether the ascendancy is not rather thrust on them than claimed by them. Here again I think the outward gait of the boy goes far towards obtaining for him the submission of his fellows.
I don’t care twopence who have their way,” said Lucinda, “I mean to have mine; – that’s all.
And she took in Lizzie Greystock, whom she hated almost as much as she did sermons, because the admiral’s wife had been her sister, and she recognised a duty. But, having thus bound herself to Lizzie, – who was a beauty, – of course it became the first object of her life to get rid of Lizzie by a marriage.
She had been notably religious, but that was gradually wearing off as she advanced in years. The rigid strictness of Sabbatarian practice requires the full energy of middle life.
I don’t want no notoriety. I wants to earn my bread peaceable, and to be let alone when I’m about my own business. I pays rates for the police to look after rogues, not to haul folks about and lock ’em up for days and nights, who is doing what they has a legal right to do.
The so-called Conservative, the conscientious, philanthropic Conservative, seeing this, and being surely convinced that such inequalities are of divine origin, tells himself that it is his duty to preserve them.
But these extravagances were due perhaps to whisky-and-water, and that kind of intoxication which comes to certain men from momentary triumphs. Tifto could always be got to make a fool of himself when surrounded by three or four men of rank who, for the occasion, would talk to him as an equal.
His feelings towards his friends were, that while they stuck to him he would stick to them; that he would work with them shoulder to shoulder; that he would be faithful to the faithful. He knew nothing of the beautiful love which can be true to a false friend.
I know very well that men are friends when they step up and shake hands with each other. It is the same as when women kiss.” “When I see women kiss, I always think that there is deep hatred at the bottom of it.
They two men cut the door, and took the box, and opened it, – and when they’d opened it, they didn’t get the swag. Where was the swag?
But are no other portraits necessary? Should we not be taught to see the men and women among whom we really live, – men and women such as we are ourselves, – in order that we should know what are the exact failings which oppress ourselves, and thus learn to hate, and if possible to avoid in life the faults of character which in life are hardly visible, but which in portraiture of life can be made to be so transparent.
Men very skilful in unravelling such mysteries were sent to Paris, and the police of that capital entered upon the search with most praiseworthy zeal. But the number of life-preservers which had been sold altogether baffled them. It seemed that nothing was so common as that gentlemen should walk about with bludgeons in their pockets covered with leathern thongs.
There are certain phases of mind in which a man can neither ride nor shoot, nor play a stroke at billiards, nor remember a card at whist, – and to such a phase of mind had come both Crosbie and Dale after their conversation over the gate.