Charles Dickens

“ It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.
‘Besides which,’ said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the room, dubiously, ‘it’s so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an incomprehensible way.’
‘I am quite sure,’ repeated Sissy, ‘that it is the only reparation in your power, sir. ”

“ James Harthouse. ‘Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in training.’
Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa, ordered ‘Some dinner at six - with a beefsteak in it,’ and got through the intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at compound interest. ”

“ I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this - and - and, I cannot say,’ he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, ‘that I have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.’
Sissy’s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished. ”

“ A secret sense of having failed and been ridiculous - a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of things, would say at his expense if they knew it - so oppressed him, that what was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him ashamed of himself. ”

“ James Harthouse, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a little while. ‘The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl - only a stroller - only James Harthouse made nothing of - only James Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.’
The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:
Dear Jack, - All up at Coketown. ”

“ He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been - in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away - by the fervour of this reproach. ”

“ At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with - in fact with - the domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father’s being a machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a bear ”

“ However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than once. ‘It wouldn’t be bad,’ he yawned at one time, ‘to give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.’ At another time it occurred to him, ‘Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.’ But these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his suspense ”

“ The hotel where he was known to live when condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest - What will be, will be.
‘So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner - which would seem as likely as anything else in the present state of affairs - I’ll dine,’ said Mr. ”