An Italian with white mice! – on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one’s feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.
It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite transiently,–on a mile’s journey, perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.
Mrs. Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.
I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman’s living.
Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow of individual minds, agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the truth of feeling as the only universal bond of union.
How can a man explain at the expense of a woman?
Romola had had contact with no mind that could stir the larger possibilities of her nature; they lay folded and crushed like embryonic wings, making no element in her consciousness beyond an occasional vague uneasiness.
Mrs. Crackenthorp – a small blinking woman, who fidgeted incessantly with her lace, ribbons, and gold chain, turning her head about and making subdued noises, very much like a guinea-pig that twitches its nose and soliloquizes in all company indiscriminately – now blinked and fidgeted towards the Squire, and said, “Oh, no – no offence.
I should say she didn’t,” said Mr. Macey, significantly. “Before I said “sniff”, I took care to know as she’d say “snaff”, and pretty quick too. I wasn’t a-going to open my mouth, like a dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi’ nothing to swaller.
Even much stronger mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best.
I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.
He, like others, happened to be looking at her, and their eyes met – to her intense vexation, for it seemed to her that by looking at him she had betrayed the reference of her thoughts, and she felt herself blushing.
Every lady ought to be a perfect horsewoman, that she may accompany her husband.” “You see how widely we differ, Sir James. I have made up my mind that I ought not to be a perfect horsewoman, and so I should never correspond to your pattern of a lady.
Wishes are held to be ominous; according to which belief the order of the world is so arranged that if you have an impious objection to a squint, your offspring is more likely to be born with one; also, that if you happen to desire a squint, you would not get it. This desponding view of probability the hopeful entirely reject, taking their wishes as good and sufficient security for all kinds of fulfilment.
The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night.
Rosamund, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own – hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect – could find no words, but involuntarily she put her lips to Dorothea’s forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.
Young love-making – that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to – the things whence its subtle interlacing are swung – are scarcely perceptible; momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life to another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.
At home, at school, among acquaintances, she had been used to have her conscious superiority admitted; and she had moved in a society where everything, from low arithmetic to high art, is of the amateur kind politely supposed to fall short of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do more than they like – otherwise they would probably give forth abler writings and show themselves more commanding artists than any the world is at present obliged to put up with.
As to his religious notions – why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic.
And all we’ve got to do is to trusten, Master Marner – to do the right thing as fur as we know and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o’ good and rights, we may be sure as there’s a good and a rights bigger not what we can know – I feel it i’ my own inside as it must be so.