Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, Volume 2, Book 4

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William Blackwood, 1871
 

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Page 48 - Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair." So sung a little Clod of Clay Trodden with the cattle's feet, But a Pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: "Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to Its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.
Page 58 - I, father," said Mary, not looking up, but putting the back of her father's hand against her cheek. " I don't want to pry, my dear. But I was afraid there might be something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you. You see, Mary'' — here Caleb's voice became more tender ; he had been pushing his hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his eyes on his daughter — "a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her....
Page 359 - 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. And who, if Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents — his suspicions that he was not any longer adored without criticism — could have denied that they were founded on good reasons ? On the contrary, there was a strong reason to be added, which he had not himself taken explicitly into account — namely, that he was...
Page 44 - But it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the word "business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in its gold-fringed linen. Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labour by which the social body is fed, clothed, and housed.
Page 374 - In the jar of her whole being, Pity was overthrown. Was it her fault that she had believed in him — had believed in his worthiness ? — And what, exactly, was he ? — She was able enough to estimate him — she who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him.
Page 256 - But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.
Page 77 - ... homage. If Lydgate had been aware of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's pre-eminence without too precise a knowledge of what it con-sisted in.
Page 188 - Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke, who nodded and said, — " Yes, a very decent family — a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the manufacturing interest. You have seen him at my house, you know." " Ah, yes : one of your secret committee," said Mrs. Cadwallader, provokingly. " A coursing fellow, though," said Sir James, with a fox-hunter's disgust. " And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is how his family look so...
Page 70 - AN eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions ; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo ! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that...
Page 367 - To a mind largely instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion of the head. Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life, — a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them ? But there was nothing...

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