Great Throughts Treasury

"There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?"

"There is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequences of his passions--does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread."

"There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten."

"There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life."

"There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil that is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease."

"There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself."

"There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. . . . It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle."

"There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows."

"There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows--in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain--in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine--it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction."

"There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all."

"There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of property intended for herself, and always regarded by her as excessive. She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others - likely to tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear."

"There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow."

"There were intervals in which she could sit perfectly still, enjoying the outer stillness and the subdued light. The red fire with its gently audible movement seemed like a solemn existence calmly independent of the petty passions, the imbecile desires, the straining after worthless uncertainties, which were daily moving her contempt. Mary was fond of her own thoughts, and could amuse herself well sitting in the twilight with her hands in her lap; for, having early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part. Mary might have become cynical if she had not had parents whom she honored, and a well of affectionate gratitude within her, which was all the fuller because she had learned to make no unreasonable claims."

"There's a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure by the square, and say, 'Do this and that'll follow,' and, 'Do that and this'll follow.' There's things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so as you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that;' and I'll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it."

"There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it."

"There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots."

"There's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth."

"There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side."

"There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up forever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel."

"There's no rule so wise but what it's a pity for somebody or other."

"There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough."

"There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work... The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot."

"There's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself."

"There's truth in wine, and there may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it's truth worth my knowing, is another question."

"These bitter sorrows of childhood! When sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless."

"These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people — amongst whom your life is passed — that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire — for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice. So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth."

"These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of."

"They kissed each other with a deep joy."

"There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs meets a continual want of the imagination."

"They the royal-hearted women are who nobly love the noblest, yet have grace for needy suffering lives in lowliest place, carrying a choicer sunlight in their smile, the heavenliest ray that pitieth the vile."

"Things are achieved when they are well begun. The perfect archer calls the deer his own while yet the shaft is whistling."

"Things don't happen because they're bad or good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it is but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string."

"This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it."

"This is life to come, — which martyred men have made more glorious for us who strive to follow. May I reach that purest heaven, — be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony, enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, beget the smiles that have no cruelty, be the sweet presence of a good diffused, and in diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible whose music is the gladness of the world."

"This is the bitterest of all, to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing."

"This wonder which my soul hath found, this heart of music in the might of sound, shall forthwith be the share of all our race, and like the morning gladden common space: the song shall spread and swell as rivers do, and I will teach our youth with skill to woo this living lyre, to know its secret will; its fine division of the good and ill. So shall men call me sire of harmony, and where great Song is, there my life shall be. Thus glorying as a god beneficent, forth from his solitary joy he went to bless mankind."

"Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless."

"Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves."

"Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love."

"Those who trust us educate us."

"Though I am not endowed with an ear to seize those earthly harmonies, which to some devout souls have seemed, as it were, the broken echoes of the heavenly choir--I apprehend that there is a law in music, disobedience whereunto would bring us in our singing to the level of shrieking maniacs or howling beasts."

"Thought has joys apart, even in blackest woe, and seizing some fine thread of verity knows momentary godhead."

"Thoughts are so great--aren't they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a great flood."

"Three words have often been used as the trumpet-call of men - the words God, Immortality, Duty - pronounced with terrible earnestness."

"Throughout their friendship Deronda had been used to Hans' egotism, but he had never before felt intolerant of it: when Hans, habitually pouring out his own feelings and affairs, had never cared for any detail in return, and, if he chanced to know any, had soon forgotten it"

"Time, like money, is measured by our needs."

"Timid people always reek their peevishness on the gentle."

"'Tis a petty kind of fame at best, that comes of making violins; and saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go to purgatory none the less."

"Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm."

"They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit."