It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors in life’s stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they chose to deem higher and more important.
She could scarcely forgive him – least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer! – for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world – while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.
Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.
I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother’s side. Shall I put these feelings into words?
Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth;.
Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood.
Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.
On the threshold she paused... for perchance the idea of entering, all alone, and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear.
It is a comfortable thought, that the smallest and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of Heaven.
In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion.
The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible one, as such clews generally are. It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!
There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven’s vital air lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the grip of the pestilence should clutch him.
I never, till now, had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me, and, whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance. But peace overflows from your heart into mine.
Oh Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure imagination you hide under that little straw hat!
Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk.
Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!
Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad.
She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be for good.
It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smiling, “that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier at the bottom of his wisdom; only they have not quite so much distinctness in his mind as in that of the systematizing Frenchman.
Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator...