Anthony Trollope

“ To Lady Desmond, Clara was a child; how then could she be more to him? And yet now it was too plain that he had looked on Clara as a woman. In what light then must he have thought of that woman's mother? And so, with saddened heart, but subdued anger, she continued to gaze through the window till all without was dusk and dark.
There can be to a woman no remembrance of age so strong as that of seeing a daughter go forth to the world a married woman. If that does not tell the mother that the time of her own youth has passed away, nothing will ever bring the tale home. ”

“ Orme's feet, and hid her face in the skirt of Mrs. Orme's dress.
"My friend—my friend!" said Lady Mason.
"Yes, I am your friend—indeed I am. But, dear Lady Mason—" And she endeavoured to think of words by which she might implore her to rise and compose herself.
"How is it you can bear with such a one as I am? How is it that you do not hate me for my guilt?"
"He does not hate us when we are guilty."
"I do not know. Sometimes I think that all will hate me,—here and hereafter—except you. Lucius will hate me, and how shall I bear that? Oh, Mrs. Orme, I wish he knew it!" ”

“ Bertram, grief, I fear, must still be solitary."
"And so, unendurable."
"God still tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, now as he has ever done. But there is no sudden cure for these evils. The time will come when all this will be remembered, not without sorrow, but with a calm, quiet mourning that will be endurable; when your heart, now not broken as you say, but tortured, will be able to receive other images. But that time cannot come at once. Nor, I think, is it well that we should wish it. Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer." ”

“ It seems to me that no one can love as I do now, Ayala; it has grown upon me from hour to hour as I have seen you. When I first took you away to that dance it was so already. Do you remember that night at the theatre,—when I had come away from everything and striven so hard that I might be near to you before you went back to your home? Ayala, I loved you then so dearly;—but not as I love you now. When I saw you riding away from me yesterday, when I could not get over the brook, I told myself that unless I might catch you at last, and have you all to myself, I could never again be happy. ”

“ Do you think that you could be happier as the wife of such a one as Daniel Thwaite, a creature infinitely beneath you, separated as you would be from all your kith and kin, from all whose blood you share, from me and from your family, than you would be as the bearer of a proud name, the daughter and the wife of an Earl Lovel,—the mother of the earl to come? I will not speak now of duty, or of fitness, or of the happiness of others which must depend upon you. It is natural that a girl should look to her own joys in marriage. ”

“ Bold," said Eleanor, "do not speak so; I ask nothing for myself; and what I ask for my father, it cannot harm you to grant."
"I would give her my soul, if it would serve her," said Bold, still addressing his sister; "everything I have is hers, if she will accept it; my house, my heart, my all; every hope of my breast is centred in her: her smiles are sweeter to me than the sun, and when I see her in sorrow as she now is, every nerve in my body suffers. No man can love better than I love her." ”

“ I am true to you now,—as ever."
"And, what, then, of your truth to Miss Florence Burton?"
"It will not be for you to rebuke me with that. We have, both of us, played our game badly, but not for that reason need we both be ruined and broken-hearted. In your folly you thought that wealth was better than love; and I, in my folly,—I thought that one love blighted might be mended by another. When I asked Miss Burton to be my wife you were the wife of another man. Now that you are free again I cannot marry Miss Burton."
"You must marry her, Harry." ”

“ Gertrude, with her talent, her beauty, and dignity of demeanour, had hitherto been, perhaps, the closest to the mother's heart—had been, if not the most cherished, yet the most valued; Gertrude had been the apple of her eye. This should be altered now. If a mother's love could atone for a mother's negligence, Mrs. Woodward would atone to her child for this hour of misery! And Katie—her sweet bonny Katie—she, at least, should be protected from the wolves. Those were the thoughts that passed through Mrs. Woodward's heart as she sat there caressing Linda. ”

“ Eames, is to your very good health," said Lupex, raising to his mouth a steaming goblet of gin-and-water, "and wishing you many years to enjoy your official prosperity."
"Thank ye," said Eames. "I don't know much about the prosperity, but I'm just as much obliged."
"Yes, sir; when I see a young man of your age beginning to rise in the world, I know he'll go on. Now look at me, Mr. Eames. Mr. Cradell, here's your very good health, and may all unkindness be drowned in the flowing bowl— Look at me, Mr. Eames. I've never risen in the world; I've never done any good in the world, and never shall." ”

“ What but a sham could be a man who consented to pretend to sit as one of a Board of Directors to manage an enormous enterprise with such colleagues as Lord Alfred Grendall and Sir Felix Carbury, under the absolute control of such a one as Mr. Augustus Melmotte? Was not this building a house upon the sand with a vengeance? What a life it would be for Henrietta Carbury were she to marry a man striving to become rich without labour and without capital, and who might one day be wealthy and the next a beggar,—a city adventurer, who of all men was to him the vilest and most dishonest? ”

“ The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head. He could understand that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he could not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor as was Mr. Glascock. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with her position, with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a connection would have been as good as an assured marriage for every one of Sir Marmaduke's numerous daughters. ”

“ There are men whose very eyes glance business, whose every word imports care, who step as though their shoulders were weighed with thoughtfulness, who breathe solicitude, and who seem to think that all the things of life are too serious for smiles. Lord George was such a man, though he had in truth very little business to do. And then there are men who are always playfellows with their friends, who—even should misfortune be upon them,—still smile and make the best of it, who come across one like sunbeams, and who, even when tears are falling, produce the tints of a rainbow. ”

“ Whether we love the memory of Cæsar as of a great man who showed himself fit to rule the world, or turn away from him as from one who set his iron heel on the necks of men, and by doing so retarded for centuries the liberties of mankind, we have to admit that he rose by the light of his own genius altogether above the ambition of his contemporaries. If we prefer, as I do, the humanity of Cicero, we must confess to ourselves the supremacy of Cæsar, and acknowledge ourselves to belong to the beaten cause. ”

“ To struggle in vain always hurts the pride; but the wound made by the vain struggle for a woman is sorer than any other wound so made. He gnashed his teeth, and struck the iron railings with his stick;—and then he hurried home, swearing that he would never give another thought to Lily Dale. In the dead of the night, thinking of it still, he asked himself whether it would not be a fine thing to wait another ten years, and then go to her again. In such a way would he not make himself immortal as a lover beyond any Jacob or any Leander? ”

“ If Lord Lufton really loved Lucy Robarts, and was loved by Lucy Robarts, why should not they two become man and wife? And yet she did feel that it would be—perhaps, not sacrilege, as Lucy had said, but something almost as troublesome. What would Lady Lufton say, or think, or feel? What would she say, and think, and feel as to that parsonage from which so deadly a blow would fall upon her? Would she not accuse the vicar and the vicar's wife of the blackest ingratitude? Would life be endurable at Framley under such circumstances as those? ”

“ Phineas, at the moment, was thinking how far all these things which he saw, the mountains stretching everywhere around him, the castle, the lake, the river, the wealth of it all, and, more than the wealth, the nobility of the beauty, might act as temptations to Lady Laura Standish. If a woman were asked to have the half of all this, would it be possible that she should prefer to take the half of his nothing? He thought it might be possible for a girl who would confess, or seem to confess, that love should be everything. ”

“ Of course to me Frank Jones is the best of men. I can't have him; and that is just all about it. I am not going to give up the world because Frank Jones is lost. Love is not to be lord of all with me. I shall steer my little boat among the shiny waters of the London theatres, and may perhaps venture among the waves of Paris and New York; but I shall do so always with my eyes open. Gas is the atmosphere in which I am destined to glitter; and if a Marquis comes in the way,—why, I shall do the best I can with the Marquis. ”

“ If I think so, Duke, I am justified. Of late I have been with her daily,—almost hourly. I do not say that this will kill her now,—in her youth. It is not often, I fancy, that women die after that fashion. But a broken heart may bring the sufferer to the grave after a lapse of many years. How will it be with you if she should live like a ghost beside you for the next twenty years, and you should then see her die, faded and withered before her time,—all her life gone without a joy,—because she had loved a man whose position in life was displeasing to you? ”

“ Did I lie when I told the Duchess that you had promised me your love? Did I lie when I told my mother that in these days a man does not always mention marriage when he asks a girl to be his wife? You said you loved me, and I believed you, and the rest was a thing of course. And you meant it. You know you meant it. When you held me in your arms in the carriage you know you meant me to suppose that it would always be so. Then the fear of your sister came upon you, and of your sister's husband,—and you ran away! I wonder whether you think yourself a man! ”

“ Fanny, dearest Fanny,” and he sat down close beside her—“I love you better—ah! how much better, than all the world holds beside. Dearest, dearest Fanny, will you, can you, return my love?”
“Adolphus,” said Fanny, rising suddenly from her seat, more for the sake of turning round so as to look at him, than with the object of getting from him, “Adolphus, you are joking with me.”
“No, by heavens then,” said he, following her, and catching her hand; “no man in Ireland is this moment more in earnest: no man more anxiously, painfully in earnest. Oh, Fanny! ”

“ And then most men would have gone home, leaving the woman triumphant, and have repented bitterly as they sat moody over their own fires, with their wine-bottles before them. But it was not so with Owen Fitzgerald. His heart was to him a reality. He had loved with all his power and strength, with all the vigour of his soul,—having chosen to love. But he would not now be enticed by pity into a bastard feeling, which would die away when the tenderness of the moment was no longer present to his eye and touch. His love for Clara had been such that he could not even say that he loved another. ”

“ Oh, doctor! To be left alone here, all alone!'
He said some few words trying to comfort her; but who can comfort a widow bereaved of her child? Who can console a heart that has lost all that it possessed? Sir Roger had not been to her a tender husband; but still he had been the husband of her love. Sir Louis had not been to her an affectionate son; but still he had been her child, her only child. Now they were both gone. Who can wonder that the world should be a blank to her?
Still the doctor spoke soothing words, and still he held her hand. ”

“ Cease to love Florence Burton! He had not ceased to love her, nor is the heart of any man made so like a weather-cock that it needs must turn itself hither and thither, as the wind directs, and be altogether beyond the man's control. For Harry, with all his faults, and in spite of his present falseness, was a man. No man ceases to love without a cause. No man need cease to love without a cause. A man may maintain his love, and nourish it, and keep it warm by honest manly effort, as he may his probity, his courage, or his honour. ”

“ The world will forget that I am your cousin, but will remember that I was once to have been your husband."
"The world! I am past caring for the world. It is nothing to me now if all London knows how it is with me. I have loved, and thrown away my love, and tied myself to a brute. I have loved, and do love; but my love can only be a sorrow to me. I do not fear the world; but God and my conscience I do fear. Once, for one moment, George, I thought that I would fear nothing. ”

“ Woodward, and Harry Norman, with all his sorrows still written on his face, stood before her.
'Oh! Harry,' said she, 'come in; I am so glad that you have come to me. Oh! Harry, dear Harry, what shall I say to comfort you? What can I say—what can I do?'
Norman, forgetting his manhood, burst into tears, and throwing himself on a sofa, buried his face on the arm and sobbed like a young girl. But the tears of a man bring with them no comfort as do those of the softer sex. He was a strong tall man, and it was dreadful to see him thus convulsed. ”

“ Not that it must be supposed that Lord Lufton had come there with any intention of making love to Griselda, or that he ever had any fixed thought that he was doing so. Young men in such matters are so often without any fixed thoughts! They are such absolute moths. They amuse themselves with the light of the beautiful candle, fluttering about, on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, burnt up and reduced to tinder by the consuming fire of matrimony. ”

“ To have a lover, and such a lover, was a delight to her, a delight to which there was now hardly any drawback, as there was nothing now of which she need be afraid. To have him with her as other girls may have their lovers, she knew was impossible to her. But to read his words, and to write loving words to him, to talk to him of his future life, and bid him think of her, his poor Marion, without allowing his great manly heart to be filled too full with vain memories, was in truth happiness to her. "Why should you want to come?" she said. "It is infinitely better that you should not come. ”

“ He would not have made love to Clara Van Siever in her room if she had not told him to do so!
"Maria," he said, in a very grave voice, "any sacrifice that is required on my part on your behalf I am ready to make."
"No, sir; the sacrifices shall all be made by me. It is the part of a woman to be ever sacrificial!" Poor Mrs. Dobbs Broughton! "You shall give up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall have everything,—youth, beauty, wealth, station, love,—love; and friendship also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken, so secluded as I shall be." ”

“ But what was there for any man to love in Alexandrina De Courcy?
While resolving, during his first four or five days at the castle, that he would throw Lily Dale overboard, he had contrived to quiet his conscience by inward allusions to sundry heroes of romance. He had thought of Lothario, Don Juan, and of Lovelace; and had told himself that the world had ever been full of such heroes. And the world, too, had treated such heroes well; not punishing them at all as villains, but caressing them rather, and calling them curled darlings. Why should not he be a curled darling as well as another? ”

“ Was it possible that such a girl as Anna Lovel should resist the popinjay, backed as he would be by her own instincts and by the prayers of every one of her race? And then from time to time another thought would strike him. Using his judgment as best he might on her behalf, ought he to wish that she should do so? The idleness of an earl might be bad, and equally bad the idleness of a countess. To be the busy wife of a busy man, to be the mother of many children who should be all taught to be busy on behalf of mankind, was, to his thinking, the highest lot of woman. ”

“ If it was so that Frank's folly had been listened to with a certain amount of pleasure, Mary did not even admit so much to herself. But why should it have been otherwise? Why should she have been less prone to love than he was? Had he not everything which girls do love? which girls should love? which God created noble, beautiful, all but godlike, in order that women, all but goddesslike, might love? To love thoroughly, truly, heartily, with her whole body, soul, heart, and strength; should not that be counted for a merit in a woman? ”