After that I met that lawyer in the street, and was ashamed to look him in the face. I’m blessed if he didn’t come up and shake hands with me, and tell me that he knew all along that his client hadn’t a leg to stand on. Now I call that beautiful.” “Beautiful!” said Kenneby. “Yes, I do. He fought that battle just as if he was sure of winning, though he knew he was going to lose. Give me the man that can fight a losing battle. Anybody can play whist with four by honours in his own hands.
The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III., which, though they were grand days for the construction of the constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description.
A liar has many points to his favour, – but he has this against him, that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally.
Morning parties, as a rule, are failures. People never know how to get away from them gracefully.
A man may have the best of causes, the best of talents, and the best of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as strongly as Junius; but even with all this he cannot successfully answer, when attacked by The Jupiter. In such matters it is omnipotent. What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that The Jupiter is in England. Answer such an article! No, warden; whatever you do, don’t do that.
Remember me very kindly to the duke, and pray enable poor Fawn to keep up his spirits. If he likes to arrange a meeting with Lord George, I shall be only too happy to be his friend. You remember our last duel. Chiltern is with you, and can put Fawn up to the proper way of getting over to Flanders, – and of returning, should he chance to escape.
It is, however, no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. Men, full fledged and at their work, are, for the most part, too busy for much thought; but lads, on whom the work of the world has not yet fallen with all its pressure, – they have time for thinking.
Servants are wonderful actors, looking often as though they knew nothing when they know everything, – as though they understood nothing, when they understand all.
The Sir Charles Grandison business is done and gone. That’s what you mean, I suppose? Don’t you think we should find it very heavy if we tried to get it back again?” “I’m not going to ask you to be a Sir Charles Grandison, Mr. Eames. But never mind all that now. Do you know that that girl has absolutely had her first sitting for the picture?
Greystock brought with him two guns, two fishing-rods, a man-servant, and a huge hamper from Fortnum and Mason’s.
There had been with him such periods of misery, during which he had wailed inwardly and had confessed to himself that the wife of his bosom was too much for him. Now the storm seemed to be coming very roughly. It would be demanded of him that he should exercise certain episcopal authority which he knew did not belong to him. Now, episcopal authority admits of being stretched or contracted according to the character of the bishop who uses it.
The rising in life of our familiar friends is, perhaps, the bitterest morsel of the bitter bread which we are called upon to eat in life.
No; – I do not think that. But her temper is so ungovernable, and she has, if I may say so, been so spoilt among you here, – I mean by the girls, of course, – that she does not know how to restrain herself.
My dear, the least said the soonest mended,” said Mrs. French.
He had a pride in being a poor man of a high family; he had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he was proud; and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently to himself.
As he had said to his daughter, no one knows where the shoe pinches but the wearer. There are some points on which no man can be contented to follow the advice of another, – some subjects on which a man can consult his own conscience only. Our warden had made up his mind that it was good for him at any cost to get rid of this grievance; his daughter was the only person whose concurrence appeared necessary to him, and she did concur with him most heartily.
The truth is so much more real when it comes from things that are near.
Who is there that abstains from reading that which is printed in abuse of himself?
I would carry you home, Mary, if it would do you a service,” said Frank, with considerable pathos in his voice. “Oh, dear me! pray do not, Mr Gresham. I should not like it at all,” said she: “a wheelbarrow would be preferable to that.
A man desires to win a virgin heart, and is happy to know, – or at least to believe, -that he has won it. With a woman every former rival is an added victim to the wheels of the triumphant chariot in which she is sitting.