Edith Wharton

Name: The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2
Author: Edith Wharton

The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

Summary

“The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2”, published in 1901, is a work by Edith Wharton. It explores elements such as Pianura, Odo and de Crucis.

Quotes from The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (Edith Wharton)

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ De Crucis understood the force of these traditional influences; but Odo, in common with the more cultivated men of his day, had lived too long in an atmosphere of polite scepticism to measure the profound hold of religion on the consciousness of the people. Christ had been so long banished from the drawing-room that it was has hard to believe that He still ruled in field and vineyard. To men of Odo's stamp the piety of the masses was a mere superficial growth, a kind of mental mould to be dried off by the first beams of knowledge. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ No one was more ignorant than her husband of the motives determining her act. As Duchess of Monte Alloro she might have enjoyed the wealth and independence which her uncle's death had bestowed on her, but in marrying again she resigned the right to her new possessions, which became vested in the crown of Pianura. Was it love that had prompted the sacrifice? As she stood beside him on the altar steps of the Cathedral, as she rode home beside him between their shouting subjects, Odo asked himself the question again and again. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ Andreoni and his friends at once returned to Pianura, and Gamba at the same time emerged from his mysterious hiding-place. He was the only one of the group who struck Odo as having any administrative capacity; yet he was more likely to be of use as a pamphleteer than as an office-holder. As to the other philosophers, they were what their name implied: thoughtful and high-minded men, with a generous conception of their civic duties, and a noble readiness to fulfil them at any cost, but untrained to action, and totally ignorant of the complex science of government. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ De Crucis, however, had been much in France, and had frequented the French churchmen, who (save in the highest ranks of the hierarchy) were keenly alive to the need of reform, and ready, in many instances, to sacrifice their own privileges in the public cause. These men, living in their provincial cures or abbeys, were necessarily in closer contact with the people, better acquainted with their needs and more competent to relieve them, than the city demagogues theorising in Parisian coffee-houses on the Rights of Man and the Code of Nature. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ He did not conceive it as a habit of thought so old that it had become instinctive, so closely intertwined with every sense that to hope to eradicate it was like trying to drain all the blood from a man's body without killing him. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ In the present juncture of affairs it is needful that you should appear to be in sympathy with the liberals, and that whatever reforms you attempt should seem the result of popular pressure rather than of your own free choice. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ At his request his ministers had drawn up a plan of financial reorganisation, which should include the two duchies; for Monte Alloro, though wealthier than Pianura, was in even greater need of fiscal reform. As a first step towards replenishing the treasury the Duke had declared himself ready to limit his private expenditure to a fixed sum; and he now asked the Duchess to pledge herself in the same manner. Maria Clementina, since her uncle's death, had been in receipt of a third of the annual revenues of Monte Alloro. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (1901)

“ It was to put Odo on his guard against these two influences that de Crucis was chiefly anxious; but the intelligent cooperation of the clergy was sadly lacking in his administrative scheme. He knew that Odo could not count on the support of the Church party, and that he must make what use he could of the liberals in his attempts at reform. The clergy of Pianura had been in power too long to believe in the necessity of conceding anything to the new spirit ”

Edith Wharton

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Quotes from The Valley of Decision — Book IV, Chapter 2 (Edith Wharton)

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