Various

“ What I demand now is that queen of women, after whom I have thirsted even while drinking, by the side of whom my princely dignity shall appear but as a herald; for whose voice my soul starves though I sit in the wisest councils of the world; in whom I see our torturing human weaknesses healed to a joyous beauty; that woman before whom I, though mad with victory, must bend my proud knee in trembling and affright; whose blushes shall bear witness to me how a longing heart can shield itself in modesty; she who will stand in deepest need and beg with me at the cross-roads ”

“ For I shall not avenge myself, nor count it my duty to shatter the fearful edifice of thy throne. So long as it will uphold thee and thy blood-blinded sword, so long be thou and thy people worthy of one another. Enough! Hans, set forth!
[Cölestin and the other nobles come up the steps.]
Duke. Behold, ye noble gentlemen! Blood of the cross, what a hero we have here! He halts here: makes a mighty clamor: naught has or ever can delay his march of triumph:--and then on a sudden he makes a short turn, breathes a deep sigh, and like the other poltroons, leaves the field to me. ”

“ What dost thou ask?
Prince. I forced from thee the words that taught me my way; the deed thou hast demanded is accomplished, and I claim the prize!
Burial-wife. What I have promised thee, I will faithfully fulfil, my child. A primal force lies within these white husks. They change their form according to their owner's will. What, then, is thy desire? A woman?
Prince. A woman? There are enough of women. More than one has borne me down to earth in the snare of her supple limbs, and hampered my soul's flight. What is a woman? ”

“ Thou knowest I have quenched the last embers of my desires. Thinkest thou to kindle a new blaze thereon by victory and sin? A fire must run from heaven, must mount from hell, to light a new life in my fading course. A thing of horror must first come to pass; whence it came would be as naught to me, if it could but rise wonder-like upon my sight. Alas, from out these ashes no miracle can rise for me! I can no longer hope and struggle.... The door stands open to the upper room.... Once more I mount up to the height, once more behold the gray dawn turn to gold in rosy glory--
Hans Lorbass. ”

“ I speak not of the sins that now already weigh thee down: eternal God shall judge them, for thou mayst not sin and not atone. But even now thy spirit, corroded with rancorous spite, hast turned the edge of our ancestral sword against thy honor and thy manhood. Lo, there it glistens in thy burning grasp; and to that all-avenging sword I make my prayer: to the arm where still resides our safety: to the eyes from which looks out an unquenched thirst of fighting: that thou wilt lead to victory thy broken people, who surround the tower and call upon thee in their need. ”

“ Queen. A most unhappy woman stands before thee, and with streaming eyes casts away all the shame that modesty and rank combine to weigh her with, and prays thee: O go not! For behold! As I came to-day to God's dwelling-house full of tormenting thoughts--I saw thee on the way, thou scarce didst notice me--while I stood there before thy face longing within me that a sign might be given me, it seemed as though there flowed a something like light, like a murmuring through the spacious place, as on a festal day the sacred miracle of His presence. ”

“ GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE AT HARVARD.
It is an age of the universality of genius. Not only the treasures of our own literature in our own day, but the best that has been written in all lands in all ages, the best that is being thought and sung in every tongue to-day is ours. And the test of what is good is no longer that it appeals to the people of a certain period or race, but that it appeals to and expresses the spirit of humanity, that it fills a place in a Welt-Litteratur. ”

“ Lord Chancellor and Lord House Marshal, you nobles, councillors, and wise men all, who let yourselves be plagued with doubts like flea-bites,--if you permit it I will say one thing to you: between sin and punishment, between right and wrong, between hate and love, and good and bad, between sand and sea, and swamp and stone, between flesh of women and dead men's bones, between desire and possession, between field and furrow,--he goes, a man of men, straight through,--looking to neither right nor left! ”

“ Illustrious Lady, honored Queen, as chancellor of thy appointed realm, I offer thee this sword whereon to take the oath: that in thy hand, so strong because so weak, what first prevailed as thy country's law, what now prevails, and what shall prevail again when violence and lust cease to clutch after our soul's sanctuaries,--that law on which we have relied, so mild it was, because created by a free and happy fatherland--will be forever new and vigorous. ”

“ From them shall spring a new race of Gods, typifying the new ideals which shall uplift man until he is fitted for fellowship at the banquet of the Immortals. Thence will rise "a nobler, a larger mankind," wakened at length from "the night of toil, unhallowed by joy in the task." Through Aphrodite will come "feeling and loving--and art that bids death defiance," and through Apollo "seeing and knowing and man's life-mastering science." Thence shall come
"The lover's rapture Elysian,
The poet's fury, the prophet's vision,
The serene world-sight of the thinker." ”

“ The main issue between freedom and fatalism lies in just this question: Is a man's life determined by what he is or by what he does? Does his nature, received through inheritance, moulded by circumstance, determine his acts and so his life? Or does his moral choice determine these?
Extreme fatalists declare that the former is true. Moralists, idealists, believers in freedom, support the latter view.
Now Meredith leaves us no doubt as to his position on the point. Again and again we see his characters choosing their lives. And their choices rest on no inherited nature, but on character. ”

“ And again perhaps, if this braggart who was sent hither and now crawls away again, did not quite take off that weak old head of thine, he would just have thee hanged, out of pure pity.
Cölestin. Thou listenest in silence to this unmeasured raving? I ask not now upon what throne thy father sat, I only ask the weakling: Art thou a man? Is this body that glows in prideful youth, only a hardly fed up paunch? Is the angry red painted upon thy brow, and yet canst thou endure and not wipe out the insult thou hast received? ”

“ Whoever runs after his desire shall perish in the race; it only yields to him who hurls it from him. Thou dost not know as yet the old wife's schemes; thou standest now above enchantment, a young glowing god confiding in the magic of thine own strength. What thou dost know is that thy prize is hidden, and that the broad path of possibilities, on which thou thinkest to glide aloft, may be choked all at once between black walls and leave thee fevered and panting with the chase, with desire and loathing, eagerness and shrinking, to hasten on forever and never gain the end. ”

“ Hans Lorbass. If not? He swore,--and here his spleen burst out--that let a single sword be raised against him, a single spear be laid in rest, and he would hang and quarter every living, breathing thing, without mercy. This he calls choking rebellion in the seed.
King. And what was the decision of the people?
Hans Lorbass. The people will fight.
King. Will fight? Will fight? This flock of nestlings, lacking in every sort of strength, inspired by no courage-breeding fire, wanting in power, in discipline,--
Hans Lorbass. ”

“ Duke. I trust thee. If thou wilt swear thy truth to me, then come. With me all is feasting and revelry.
Hans [looking out to sea again] . Thank thee, my lord. I care not to do murder, and I can play the robber by myself.
Duke. Seize him.
Sköll [beseechingly] . Master, our dearest companion, who never yet has played us false.
[Duke draws his sword and makes as if to attack Hans.]
Hans [gripping his sword and flourishing it high in the air.] Thou art the master and wonted to victory; but come too near, and thou hast only been the master! ”

“ This, then, is George Meredith's message. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the power to choose between the two has entered into our souls. We are under the rule of a great overhanging law. Destiny's wheels we cannot stop, but through our capacity for moral choice, our hands lie on the button that moves the whole machine in its relation to our own individual lives. ”

“ We cannot fail to recognize the duality of the truth, but have we been able yet to join the two sides into one, to discover the unity that surely lies behind the seeming contrast?
Each side of the question has been largely developed. Some, in a narrow spirit, have echoed merely Beowulf's, "Fate always aids the undoomed man"; while others, often as narrowly, have answered, "A man succeeds, if his courage holds out." Ever in our greatest literature the two elements have appeared side by side. The mystery has always been recognized. ”

“ Behold! [He tears open his gorget and draws out the last of the heron's feathers.] The enchantment's last beguiling pledge I hold here in my hand. When this feather shrivels in the flame there sinks an unblessed woman to her death, that woman whose wraith stood in the heavens for me to gaze upon,--that woman whom I sought and never found! Behold! I bury the madness in its grave, and with the act I put the longing from me. [He tosses the feather into the flames. There is a flash of lightning, and a roll of thunder follows it.]
Queen [sinks down, whispering with failing strength] . ”

“ For the beauty of which the poet sings, the birds and the flowers, are only dreams from which he wakes to the misery in his life. It is not the bitter sadness of hate and rebellion, but the sadness of the Jewish race, resigned and oppressed, expecting no happiness among an alien people, but looking for a life of peace in a new Jerusalem. ”

“ Thou livest here and yet thou hast not heard of the Amberqueen, the marvel of beauty who has sworn to yield herself and her throne to the man that is victorious in a tournament for life and death, and bears all her other suitors to the earth? The fair one is a widow, the heir an orphan ”

“ My nightly watches, twilight's scanty rest, the morning's ardent fiery prayers, and more than all, the consecrated labor of the day, wherein what has been obtained from God with tears, must be besieged anew with fierce resolve, and conquered by the teeth-set "I will," won by obstinate unshrinking,--sorrow--doubt--danger--struggle--unsuccess to-day and new onslaught tomorrow--and so on and on--and always forward--have I all this behind me, and yet have I returned without the feathers?
Hans. Thou hast the feathers? Are they really heron's feathers, from the very bird? ”

“ In our great literature there has always appeared a close sequence between wisdom and success, righteousness and happiness, and, on the other hand, between the choice of moral evil and suffering. This sequence has been not merely expressed in words, but built into the very structure of the plot through the workings of the imagination kindled by genius. The law of this succession, and its relationship with other laws, philosophers have always been seeking. It is this search that has led men into the mazy discussions of freedom and fatalism. ”