In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die.
It had a small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the southwest front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun.
When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.
Was never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain.
Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.
Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think it quite ordinary. Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self. And.
If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.
In this stupid world, most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.
You must not judge of Celia’s feeling from mine. I think she likes these small pets. She had a tiny terrier once, which she was very fond of. It made me unhappy, because I was afraid of treading on it. I am rather short-sighted.
If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself – that’s where it is.
Giants have an immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse.
Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse.
We can never give up longing and wishing while we are throughly alive.
Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
O me, O me, what frugal cheer My love doth feed upon! A touch, a ray, that is not here, A shadow that is gone:.
Even much stronger mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best. “The theater of all my actions is fallen,” said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead, and they are fortunate who get a theater where the audience demands their best.
She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force.
A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that sort. I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it worth while. And.
But you always were wrong: only I can’t help loving you.
There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us; and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust. ‘If you are not good, non is good’ – those little words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse.