Various

“ Ruskin, the destiny thus given to painting would be certainly one of the noblest and most useful of functions, but it has the fault of being impossible. No more could music, while agitating my nerves according to the laws of harmony, teach me at the same time as from the chair of a professor.
No, never, however shocking it may sound in or out of studios, never has truth in the ordinary sense of the word been the end of art. The value of a painting as a means of making us know the nature of realities shall have nothing in common with its value as a work of art. ”

“ I was suddenly conscious of something white moving on the road before me. At the same second my horse suddenly wheeled with such violence as to break my stirrup-leather and almost throw me over his neck. I pulled him up and turned him back, and there before me, coming along the unused road up the hill from Halloway's, was old Joel, sitting in a cart, looking at me, and bowing to me politely just as he had done that morning on his way to the gallows; while dangling from the white limb of the sycamore, swaying softly in the wind, hung the corpse of Absalom. ”

“ I knew of a deer once, that, run down by the hounds, sought safety with the hunter, and he saved it—and you also I have run down and you boldly seek safety with me. Yes! you are as wise as you are beautiful. We are brothers, oh, bounding Blacktail! only I am the elder and stronger, and if only my strength could always be at hand to save you, you would never come to harm. Go now without fear, to range the piney hills; never more shall I follow your trail with the wild wolf rampant in my heart. Less and less as I grow do I see in your race mere flying marks, or butcher-meat. ”

“ As she was very beautiful and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life keenly and eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering their own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her to their dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the country. In her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was not in love, as he was, her life was not narrowed down to but one ideal. ”

“ Again the flash—the move of a restless ear, then the oak-boughs moved and Yan trembled, for he knew that the log in the brush was the form of the Sandhill Stag. So grand, so charged with life. He seemed a precious, sacred thing—a King, fur-robed and duly crowned. To think of shooting now as he lay unconscious, resting, seemed an awful crime. But Yan for weeks and months had pined for this. His chance had come and shoot he must. The long, long strain grew tighter yet—grew taut—broke down, as up the rifle went. But the wretched thing went wabbling and pointing all about the little glade. ”

“ At times the tracks were joined by that of some fierce foe, and the kind of mark was changed, but the chains went on for months or years, now fast, now slow, but endless, until some foe more strong joined on and there one trail was ended. But this great Stag was forging still that mystic chain. A million roods of hills had he overlaid with its links and scribbled over in this oldest script with the story of his life. If only our eyes were bright enough to follow up that twenty thousand miles of trail, what light unguessed we might obtain on the wild things' lives and thoughts. ”

“ Yes, if I could believe in the immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for hire; the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion of reality. The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of reward. Nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. ”

“ Helen's hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch dangled from a bow-knot of crushed diamonds. It was her only possession, and she was very fond of it. It also was the gift of one of the several great ladies who had adopted her since her residence in London. Helen had painted a miniature of this particular great lady which had looked so beautiful that the pleasure which the original of the portrait derived from the thought that she still really looked as she did in the miniature, was worth more to her than many diamonds. ”

“ In reality he has forbidden the artist to express himself while expressing things. He has asked him to go out of his own humanity, out of his own thought, his own emotion, his own proper affection, and try to execute what he thinks proper to cause on others such and such an impression. Nothing can relieve this tendency from the duplicity which looks toward the public, and only lives to act upon the spectators.
This is not the painter's art of painting. ”

“ And I support the crossing-sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to what end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go on being friends as we once were. What's the use of it all?"
"She is young, I tell you," repeated Miss Cavendish, "and she's too sure of you. You've told her you care, now try making her think you don't care."
Carroll shook his head impatiently.
"I will not stoop to such tricks and pretence, Marion," he cried, impatiently. ”

“ That is what I am afraid of, 'Toinette!"
Her hand slipped suddenly away from his. She stepped back from the gate.
"Tiens! You have fear, Monsieur Leclère! Truly? I had not thought of that. It is strange. For so strong a man it is a little stupid. Good-night. I hear my father calling me. Perhaps some one in the store who wants to be served. You must tell me again what you are going to do with the new quatre-roue. Good-night!"
She was laughing again. But it was a different laughter. Prosper, at the gate, did not think it sounded like the running of a brook over the stones. ”

“ He wanted to recall the sleigh, but pride kept him silent.
In a little while it was too late, and soon he was once more in the power of that fascinating endless chain of tracks. A chain begun years ago, when in a June the track of a mother blacktail was suddenly joined by two little ones' tracks; 202 since then the three had gone on winding over the land, the trail-chains they were forging. Knotted and kinked, and twisted with every move and thought of the makers, imprinted with every hap of their lives, but interrupted never wholly. ”

“ It has created a love and an appreciation for the beauty of a single flower—for in its color and form, in its graceful stem and well-formed leaves, the votaries of this art find far more enjoyment than in confused masses of many colored flowers.
While there is, no doubt, much in Japanese flower arrangement that is unintelligible to us and would fail to appeal to the uninitiated, there is also much that would be understood and admired everywhere by persons of good taste. ”

“ There could never be any other woman save Helen, but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted and neglected. He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love he was very proud. Other men could give her more in wealth or position, but no one could ever love her as he did. ”

“ Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave and fearless, and so determined to be independent of everyone, even of the lodger—especially of the lodger, who it appeared had known her very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to be independent of him, and the two Americans had many arguments and disputes about it, but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it only hurts us both when you talk so. I care for nothing and for no one but my art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you do not, and, of course, the man I am to marry, must." ”

“ Lady Gower looked at her rather doubtfully and smiled.
"I wish you would bring him to see me, Helen," she said; "I think I should like your friend very much. From what you tell me of him I doubt if you will find many such men waiting for you in this country. Our men marry for reasons of property, or they love blindly, and are exacting and selfish before and after they are married. I know, because so many women came to me when my husband was alive to ask how it was that I continued so happy in my married life." ”

“ Miss Cavendish declared, helplessly. "When I think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel—I feel like a robber."
"Don't," begged Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men—that is, as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets—I have £80 to last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next to yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. ”

“ Raskolnikoff is the greatest book I have read easily in ten years; I am glad you took to it. Many find it dull: Henry James could not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness. James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikoff was not objective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, on further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many minds of to-day, which prevents them from living in a book or a character, and keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show. ”