Harriet Martineau

“ Moyse hates the whites: and you see how wretched we are!”
“Aimée, do not be hard. We are made to love—my heart inclines to all who are about me:—but if there are some—if one cannot—Oh, Aimée, do not be hard!”
“It is those who hate who are hard,” said Aimée, whose tears fell fast, in sympathy with Afra’s. “Is it not so, Afra?”
“Well, I will go,” said Thérèse, gently. “One kiss, Aimée, for Génifrède’s sake!”
“For your own,” said Aimée, tenderly embracing her. “Bring back poor Génifrède! Tell her we will devote ourselves to her.” ”

“ I still think the finest single impression of all is half way up the American Fall, seen, not from the staircase, but from the bank on the very verge of the sheet. Here we stood this first evening, and amid the rapids above. In returning, we saw from the river the singular effect of the clouds of spray being in shadow, and the descending floods in light; while the evening star hung over one extremity of the falls, and the moon over the other, and the little perpetual cloud, amber in the last rays from the west, spread its fine drizzle like a silver veil over the scene. ”

“ We must go forth to the battle in faith and love, go forth to vindicate the rights of the mind, to perfect society, to make it the abode of all the virtues, and all the graces, to clothe man in his native dignity, and enable him to look forth in the image of his Maker upon a world of beauty.
This is my object. I am not here to preach to working men, nor to those who are not working men, in the interests of aristocracy, nor of democracy. I am here for humanity; to plead for universal man; to unfurl the banner of the cross on a new and more commanding position, and call the human race around it. ”

“ You will be proud of being a Crofton boy, by-and-by.”
“Perhaps I am now, a little,” said Hugh, blushing.
“What, already? Ah! You will do, I see. I have known old people proud of their age, and young people of their youth. I have seen poor people proud of their poverty; and everybody has seen rich people proud of their wealth. I have seen happy people proud of their prosperity, and the afflicted proud of their afflictions. Yes; people can always manage to be proud: so you have boasted of being a Londoner up to this time; and from this time you will hold your head high as a Crofton boy.” ”

“ A child's heart responds to the tones of its mother's voice like a harp to the wind; and its only hope for peace and courage is in hearing nothing but gentleness from her, and experiencing nothing but unremitting love, whatever may be its troubles elsewhere. Supposing this to be all right, the mother will feel herself from the first the depositary of its confidence;—a confidence as sacred as any other, though tacit, and about matters which may appear to all but itself and her infinitely small. ”

“ Remember what reason I have to desire no further change in my life. I have striven to obtain my due position, and found myself disgraced and exiled. I have hoped to conquer my birthright by patience and policy; and death has cut short my scheme, and the world sees in me a disappointed man. At this very hour I find myself happy for the first time in all my days; and I take this as an admonition to be content. Not seeing me, the world will soon forget me; and then, Henrietta, we shall have nothing left to wish. ”

“ I ran up the ascent to the right, and was startled at finding myself on the top of a precipice. Far beneath me ran the Little Miami, with a narrow white pebbly strand, arrow-like trees springing over from the brink of the precipice, and the long evening shadows making the current as black as night, while the green, up to the very lips of the ravine, was of the sunniest, in the last flood of western light.
For more reasons than one I should prefer Cincinnati as a residence to any other large city of the United States. ”

“ It was not a shout of anger: it was something between a shriek and a wail—like what he fancied would be the cry of a person in the act of being murdered. That Nipen was here now, he could not doubt; and, at length, Oddo fled. He fled the faster, at first, for hearing the rustle of wings; but the curiosity of the boy even now got the better of his terror, and he looked up at the barn where the wings were rustling. There he saw in the starlight the glitter of two enormous round eyes, shining down upon him from the ridge of the roof. ”

“ Anna has her mother’s countenance, and I catch occasional glimpses of the mirth which I used to love.”
“And the sensibility,” said Selina.
“Mary has the sensibility to an equal degree.”
“Oh mamma! no.”
“I discover as great a depth of feeling in Mary as in Anna, with a stronger judgment. Yes, Mary is the most like her mother. They are charming companions for you, my dears, in most respects, and I am very glad you have met.”
“In most respects!” repeated Selina: “in every respect. They are every thing that is dear and delightful!” ”

“ Armstrong would not be blind if he would only come down and survey the works. There was in the first place the beauty of the machinery. She thought it could not but gratify the taste to see how men bring the powers of nature under their own control by their own contrivances; how the wind and the fire are made to act in the furnace so that the metal runs out in a pure stream below; how, by the application of steam, such a substance as iron is passed between rollers, and compressed and shaped by them as easily as if it were potter’s clay, and then cut into lengths like twigs. ”

“ How did I dare to make so light of what has come so dreadfully true?—Oh! why are we so made that we cannot see into one another’s hearts? If we are made to depend on one another so absolutely as we are, so that we hold one another’s peace to cherish or to crush, why is it such a blind dependence? Why are we left so helpless? Why, with so many powers as are given us, have we not that one other, worth all the rest, of mutual insight? If God would bestow this power for this one day, I would give up all else for it for ever after. Philip would trust me again then, and I should understand him ”

“ There is no peril in the case, love; it is glory and happiness to live under Bonaparte. My life upon it, he will do your father no injury, but continue him in his command, under certain arrangements; and, as for the blacks, they and the whites will join in one common enthusiasm for the conqueror of Europe. Let us be among the first, my Aimée! Be mine; and we will go to the French forces—among my friends there. It is as if we were called to be mediators; it is as if the welfare of your family and the colony were, in a measure, consigned to our hands. ”

“ There was a scuffle on the raft. It seemed as if Oliver was paddling with one hand, and keeping off Roger with the other. It was terrible to see them,—it was so like fighting, in a most dangerous place. There was a splash. Mildred’s eyes grew dim in a moment, and she could see nothing: but she heard Ailwin’s voice,—very joyful,—calling out to Oliver,—
“Well done, Oliver! Well rid of him! Pull away from him, Oliver! He is full able to take care of himself, depend upon it. He was never made to be drowned. Come and help Mildred, there’s a dear! Never mind Roger.” ”

“ Sir, what a figure, in the eyes of mankind, would you make, in deadly conflict with Great Britain: she fighting the battles of emancipation, and you the battles of slavery; she the benefactress, and you the oppressor, of human kind! In such a war, the enthusiasm of emancipation, too, would unite vast numbers of her people in aid of the national rivalry, and all her natural jealousy against our aggrandisement. No war was ever so popular in England as that war would be against slavery, the slave-trade, and the Anglo-Saxon descendant from her own loins. ”

“ Why, madam, there can hardly be a brighter glory, or a more cheerful glow among the sons of God about the throne, than there is at this moment over sea and shore, and near at home up to the very stone of my threshold. Madam, I could never think this island dreary.”
“It is not always sunset, nor always summer time,” said Lady Carse, who could not deny nor wholly resist the beauty of the scene.
“Other beauty comes by night and in the winter,” observed the widow, “and at times a grandeur which is better than the beauty. ”

“ If we have patience to let her work, without hindrance and without degradation, she will justify our confidence at last. Give her free scope,—remove out of her way everything that is low and sordid, and needlessly irritating, and minister to her everything that is pure and gentle, and noble and true, and she will produce a glorious work. In the wildest flights of haughty and undisciplined imagination, the young aspirant will take heed enough to the beauty and dignity of a lowly, and dutiful and benignant walk in life, to come down and worship it when cruder visions have passed away. ”

“ Harry did not stay. Colonel Hampden never wore the scarf; but his standard went to the fight on Chalgrove Field.
Henrietta had not known nor conceived what it would be to send men forth to fight against their King. If she had imagined what passion it was that she had been smothering within her for so many months, and how the dread of battle and the horror of blood would work upon her, she would rather have hidden herself and the children in any chalk-pit of the hills than have been at Hampden House that day.
Her husband had but a moment. ”

“ And so it will always be when the mind is really pervaded by so noble a faith as Priestley's. There is no law of nature, there are no frosts of time to shed a snowblight on the heart. The feelings die out when their objects come to an end; and if there be no future, and the aims of life become shorter and shorter, and its treasures drop off, and its attractions are spent, and a few links only of its hours remain in the hand, well may there be no heart for effort and no eye for beauty, and well may love gather itself up to die. ”

“ Go to rest now, Erica. You have done quite enough since you left your bed. Go to rest now. Rest your heart upon Him who has blessed you exceedingly this day. Whatever others do, do not you be ungrateful to Him. Good sleep to you, Erica! Sleep off your troubles, that Rolf may see nothing of them in the morning.”
Erica smiled; and when Orga and Frolich saw the effect of what their mother had said, they too went to rest without trembling at every one of the noises with which a house built of wood is always resounding. ”

“ Could it then be true, that the only sanctuary of peace is in the heart? that while love is the master passion of humanity, the main-spring of human action, the crowning interest of human life—while it is ordained, natural, inevitable, it should issue as if it were discountenanced by Providence, unnatural, and to be repelled? Could it be so? Was Hester’s warning against love, against marriage, reasonable, and to be regarded? That warning Margaret thought she could never put aside, so heavily had it sunk upon her heart, crushing—she knew not what there. ”

“ When Toussaint was assured that he had seen them all—when he had again and again silently counted over the fifty-four ships-of-war—he turned to his friend with a countenance of anguish, such as even that friend of many years had never seen.
“Henri,” said he, “we must all perish. All France has come to Saint Domingo!”
“Then we will perish,” replied Henri.
“Undoubtedly: it is not much to perish, if that were all. But the world will be the worse for ever. Trance is deceived. She comes, in an error, to avenge herself, and to enslave the blacks. Trance has been deceived.” ”

“ What can be expected from little boys who are brought up to consider physical courage the highest attribute of manhood; pride of section and of caste its loftiest grace; the slavery of a part of society essential to the freedom of the rest; justice of less account than generosity; and humiliation in the eyes of men the most intolerable of evils? What is to be expected of little girls who boast of having got a negro flogged for being impertinent to them, and who are surprised at the "ungentlemanly" conduct of a master who maims his slave? ”

“ But open perfection to its veneration and immortality to its step; tell it of one who is and always will be the inspirer of genius, the originator of truth, the life of emotion; assure it that all which is loved shall live for ever; that that which is known shall enlarge for ever; that all which is felt shall grow intenser for ever, and the proximity of death will quicken instead of withering the mind; the eye will grow dim on the open page of knowledge; the hand will be found clasping in death the instruments of human good; the heart's last pulse will beat with some new emotion of benignity. ”

“ Let us hope the middle-class citizens know what it is to see the mists rising above the Serpentine or the water in St. James’s Park;—to see the gleams and reflections on the calm surface first, and then, by degrees, the objects so reflected;—to see the massy tree-forms coming dimly out, and growing clearer every minute till the sunlight catches them, and kindles their tints and hollows out their recesses. I do not know a finer spectacle in any woodlands of any country than the trees in the London parks under an October sun. ”

“ There was no answer, and Annie went on.
“I could believe that there is no love so altogether good—at least for us here. It is as yearning as that of a mother for her child, and as tender as that of lovers; and I should say, more holy than either, for theirs is natural to them in their mortal life, though it may be the purest part of it; the other love is an instinct belonging to the immortal life, a tongue of fire, sent down upon the head of a chosen one here and there, gifting them with the language of angels, to tell us on this side the grave what we shall find beyond. ”

“ While baby crawled, and gazed quietly and contentedly there, Mrs Rowland broke the seal of Margaret’s letter, turning her eyes from the writing, laid the blistered sheet in the hearth, and set fire to it. The child set up a loud crow of delight at the flame. At that moment, even this simple and familiar sound startled its mother out of all power of self-control. She snatched up the child with a vehemence which frightened it into a shrill cry. She feared the nursemaid would come before all the sparks were out; and she tried to quiet the baby by dancing it before the mirror over the mantelpiece. ”

“ They shouted and sang the tidings of their freedom, joining with them the name of Toussaint Breda. These tidings of freedom rang through the ravines, and echoed up the sides of the hills, and through the depths of the forests, startling the wild birds on the mountain-ponds and the deer among the high ferns; and bringing down from their fastnesses a multitude of men who had fled thither from the vengeance of the whites and mulattoes, and to escape sharing in the violence of the negro force which Jean Français had left behind him, to pursue uncontrolled their course of plunder and butchery. ”

“ Nothing should make him step into a boat without her. Poor Mildred had fancied, bewildered as she was this morning, that if Oliver knew of what she had done about George, he would think himself justified in leaving her to perish on the hill; and yet she could not help telling him. Her mind was relieved, for the present, and she let him go.
He found Roger where he first looked for him,—near the mummy. The poor lad was too ill to stand; but he lay on the slimy bank, poking and grubbing, with a stick and with his fingers, as deep in the soft soil as he could penetrate. ”

“ To an infant, a champaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard square of gay carpet. To the rustic it is less bewitching than a paddock with two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he casts his eye over its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its secluded homes, its mountain ranges, church spires, and untrodden forests, it is a picture of life; an epitome of the human universe; the complete volume of moral philosophy, for which he has sought in vain in all libraries. On the left horizon are the Green Mountains of Vermont, and at the right extremity sparkles the Atlantic. ”

“ We could not possibly feel more than we do for the wife who would not leave her husband when he was broken on the wheel, but tended him, wiped the sweat from his face, upheld his courage, and promised him speedy relief when death was near. We could not honour her more than we do, if we knew her intellect to have been as great as her heart. Perhaps we might say that it requires a universal greatness of character and capacity to exercise so stupendous a self-control as this. But, put it as we may, it is the devotedness which occupies us wholly in thinking of that first of wives. ”

“ How we used all to sit round the fire, and laugh and play with papa, as if we were not to separate till we had all grown old: and now, young as we are, here we are alone! How do we know that we shall be left to each other?”
“There is only one thing we can do, Hester,” said Margaret, resting her head on her sister’s shoulder. “We must make the most of being together while we can. There must not be the shadow of a cloud between us for a moment. Our confidence must be as full and free, our whole minds as absolutely open, as—as I have read and heard that two minds can never be.” ”

“ It is so great a thing to be so beloved!”
“It is indeed the greatest thing.” Margot stopped, as a turn in the walk brought them in view of the house. The long ranges of verandah stood in the moonlight, checkered with the still shadows of the neighbouring trees. Every window of the large white mansion gave out a stream of yellow light, to contrast with the silvery shining of the moon. “This is very unlike the hut we went to when we were married, Toussaint. Yet I was quite happy and contented. It is indeed the greatest thing to be loved.” ”

“ If you would have heard me, you would have found that I was not going to say a word about my husband inconsistent with all the love and honour you would have him enjoy. I assure you, you might trust me not to complain of my husband. I have no words in which to say how noble he is. But, oh! it is all true about the wretchedness of married life! I am wretched, Margaret.”
“So I see,” said Margaret, in deep sorrow.
“Life is a blank to me. I have no hope left. I am neither wiser, nor better, nor happier for God having given me all that should make a woman what I meant to be. ”