`Character,' says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - `character is destiny.' |
. . . but 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. |
. . . for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the constructive power of suspicion. |
. . . the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families . . . |
. . . you know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation. |
'Lohengrin' to us ordinary mortals seemed something like the whistling of the wind through the keyholes of a cathedral, which has a dreamy charm for a little while, but by and by you long for the sound even of a street organ to rush in and break the |
'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio |
'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. |
[I]t is very hard 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. |
[T]here 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. . . |
A blush is no language; only a dubious flag - signal which may mean either of two contradictories |
A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink . . . |
A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man. |
A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side |
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills. |