I call it improper pride to let fool's notions hinder you from doing a good action. There's no sort of work," said Caleb, with fervor, putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, "that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow.
I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away.
Some can be happy.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
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.
Aye, an' she's a pleasant-looked un too," said Wiry Ben. "I'll stick up for the pretty women preachin'; I know they'd persuade me over a deal sooner nor th' ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore the night's out, an' begin to coort the preacher, like Seth Bede.
And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence.
Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which surrounds the appreciated or desponding author.
Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?
No sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent, than she receives the tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticised.
Rosamond being one of those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
He was one of those men who can be prompt without being rash, because their motives run in fixed tracks, and they have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.
A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin.
They were too hopelessly alienated in their inner life ever to have that contest which is an effort towards agreement.
To many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a particular influence, subduing them into receptiveness.
Mrs. Davilow have willingly let fall a hint of the aerial castle-building which she had.
I magnified, as usual, the impression any word or deed of mine could produce on others.
The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them.
Even in 1831 Lowick was at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the Sunday sermon.
True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his passions - does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.
Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
Each position has its corresponding duties.
One can begin so many things with a new person!— even begin to be a better man.
Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains.
There was no reason why I should go anywhere. The world about me seemed like a vision that was hurrying by while I stood still with my pain.
Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable.
Starting a long way off the true point by loops and zigags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.
Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbors' lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness.
Why should I not marry the man who loves me, if I love him? said Catherine. To her the effort was something like the leap of a woman from the deck into the lifeboat.
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?—in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely.
As to his religious notions—why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his incantations.
It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable - when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us - that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.
No chemical process shows a more wonderful activity than the transforming influence of the thoughts we imagine to be going on in another.
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.
A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
She took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.
To crown all, there was to be a donkey-race—that sublimest of all races, conducted on the grand socialistic idea of everybody encouraging everybody else's donkey, and the sorriest donkey winning.
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.
I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.
What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.
Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?
The only conscience we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims. That's my text—which side is injured? I support the man who supports their claims, not the virtuous upholder of the wrong.
And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.
We must not inquire too curiously into motives,' he interposed, in his measured way. 'Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air.
