Go, Annie,” murmured he; “I have deceived myself, and must suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied, and dreamed that you might give it me; but you lack the talisman, Annie, that should admit you into my secrets.
The besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course – I know not exactly when or where – he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience.
The holy and generous wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times.
It has been delicately wrought,” said the artist, calmly. “As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence – call it magnetism, or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparably injured.
Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish.
Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily.
Therefore, if we built splendid castles, and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world’s improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime.
They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures, which steal from the people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers.
Intellectual activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily exercise.
L’amore, sia quando nasce, sia quando risorge da un letargo che era sembrato mortale, sprigiona tanta luce che tutto il mondo d’intorno se ne accende.
These names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable, or otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present – and still more in the future condition of society – they imply, not privilege, but restriction.
It is as clear to me as sunshine–were there any in the sky–that the greatest possible stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness and improvement, are these heaps of bricks, and stones, consolidated with mortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which men painfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home! The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it.
No longer ago than this morning, I was old. I remember looking in the glass, and wondering at my own gray hair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and the furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow’s feet about my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no right to come! I had not lived!
Writers of society, whose new works glow like the rich texture of a just-woven carpet, must be content to relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an age or two.
When men seek only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily granted – and so well deserved!
At last, after creeping as it were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge, which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebian.
At almost every step in life, we meet with young men of just about Holgrave’s age, for whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, even after mucha nd careful inquiry, we never happen to hear another word. The effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false brilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other people.
And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon-after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals-had given one farewell touch of a spirit’s joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables.
The devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford’s benefit, and accompanying the performance with her voice. Poor Clifford! Poor Hepzibah! Poor harpsichord!
She said that it had always been thus with Clifford when the humming-birds came, -always, from his babyhood,-and that his delight in them had been one of the earliest tokens by which he showed his love for beautiful things.