The Works of George Eliot: Felix Holt

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W. Blackwood, 1878

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Page 90 - My father was ignorant," said Felix, bluntly. "He knew neither the complication of the human system, nor the way in which drugs counteract each other. Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.
Page 96 - For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool : for I will say the truth: but now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me.
Page 274 - We see human heroism broken into units, and say this unit did little, — might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units ; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might he cheaply parted with.
Page 13 - ... beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer — committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear. The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human histories hidden in them; the power of...
Page 341 - Esther's thoughts, like an unacknowledged yet constraining presence, there was the sense, that if Felix Holt were to love her, her life would be exalted into something quite new — into a sort of difficult blessedness, such as one may imagine in beings who are conscious of painfully growing into the possession of higher powers...
Page 57 - She, poor woman, knew quite well that she had been unwise, and that she had been making herself disagreeable to Harold to no purpose. But half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless — nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.
Page 28 - I've held every tree sacred on the demesne, as I told you, Harold. I trusted to your getting the estate some time, and releasing it ; and I determined to keep it worth releasing. A park without fine timber is no better than a beauty without teeth and hair.
Page 68 - Independent chapel began to be filled with eager men and women, to whom the exceptional possession of religious truth was the condition which reconciled them to a meagre existence, and made them feel in secure alliance with the unseen but supreme rule of a world in which their own visible part was small.
Page 38 - That's weakness, madam. Things don't happen because they're bad or good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it is but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.
Page 273 - For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities — a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces — a movement towards a more assured end \ than the chances of a single life.

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