The religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
He was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess.
Folks as have no mind to be o’ use have allays the luck to be out o’ the road when there’s anything to be done.
[She] looked as if her nerves were quivering with the expectation that something would be thrown at her. But she never had anything worse than words to dread.
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.
Yes, said Mr. Casaubon, with that peculiar pitch of voice which makes the word half a negative.
Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should be a little filigree about a woman--something of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challe...
When the commonplace We must all die transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness I must die-- and soon, then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold u...
What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.
What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?' said Sir James. 'He has one foot in the grave.''He means to draw it out again, I suppose.
We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent, we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; but a moment is room wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outlash of a murderous though...
We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence.
We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves:
To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable — else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?
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.
This awakening of a new interest—this passing from the supposition that we hold the right opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a sudden care for it, and a sense that our opinions were ignor...
There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than i...
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 test–which side is injured? I support the...
The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can...
That was an evil terror---- an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in Godfrey's kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity...