Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust.
I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.
The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
You are a good young man,” she said. “But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.
He once calledher his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully ona murdered man’s brains.
So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.
When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in.
What right have such men to represent Christianity – as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly?
Everything is all one – that is the beginning and end with you.
How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind – impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian.
If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.
We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent, we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; but a moment is room wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outlash of a murderous thought and the sharp bakcward stroke of repetance.
No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience.
We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our little hurts will be made much of – to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune.
Love once, love always.
He has got no good red blood in his body,” said Sir James. “No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.