They thought that they loved each other: – each thought so; but there was no love, no sympathy, no warmth. The very atmosphere was cold, – so cold that no fire could remove the chill.
As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil.
Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man, – of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one, – will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber.
Solve senescentem.
She was an old woman who thought all evil of those she did not know, and all good of those whom she did know...
He, as he told his tale, did not look her in the face, but sat with his eyes fixed upon her muff.
There is so much in a turn of the eye and in the tone given to a word when such things have to be said, – so much more of importance than in the words themselves.
But yet his thoughts were very tender to her. Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless. We want what we have not; and especially that which we can never have.
Everything about her room betokened wealth; but she had put away the French novels, and had placed a Bible on a little table, not quite hidden, behind her own seat.
Loughshane, according to Barrington Erle, was so small a place, that the expense would be very little. There were altogether no more than 307 registered electors. The inhabitants were so far removed from the world, and were so ignorant of the world’s good things, that they knew nothing about bribery.
Both Lizzieites and anti-Lizzieites were disposed to think that Lizzie was very clever.
And I think that when once he had learned the art of arranging his words as he stood upon his legs, and had so mastered his voice as to have obtained the ear of the House, the work of his life was not difficult.
Leave a chimney-sweep alone when you see him, Chiltern. Should he run against you, then remember that it is one of the necessary penalties of clean linen that it is apt to be soiled.
True love, true friendship, true benevolence, true tenderness, were beautiful to her, – qualities on which she could descant almost with eloquence; and therefore she was always shamming love and friendship and benevolence and tenderness.
How happy could he be if it were only possible for him to go away, and become even a curate in a parish, without his wife! Would there ever come to him a time of freedom? Would she ever die? He was older than she, and of course he would die first. Would it not be a fine thing if he could die at once, and thus escape from his misery?
He knew her to be heartless; but even heartless people have hearts which can be touched and almost broken by certain sorrows.
He had for two years been a suitor of Violet Effingham, who was the acknowledged beauty of the day, – of Violet Effingham who, at the present time, was the wife of Lord Chiltern; and he had offered himself thrice to Madame Max Goesler, who was reputed to be as rich as she was beautiful.
Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious. She would be constant with him day and night to make him understand that his duty to his country required him to be in very truth its chief ruler.
It is not so in the United States. There the same political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear each other limb from limb. I doubt whether Mr. Daubeny would have injured a hair of Mr. Mildmay’s venerable head, even for an assurance of six continued months in office.