The Writings of George Eliot: Felix Holt, the radical

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1907

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Page 93 - 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 87 - 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. I know something about these things.
Page 88 - ... of raw haggis mounting from below, and old women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs, — wanting to turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place for a good many of the people in it. But I 've made up my mind it sha'n't be the worse for me, if I can help it.
Page 3 - But everywhere the bushy hedgerows wasted the land with their straggling beauty, shrouded the grassy borders of the pastures with catkined hazels, and tossed their long blackberry branches on the corn-fields. Perhaps they were white with May, or starred with pale pink dogroses; perhaps the urchins were already nutting amongst them, or gathering the plenteous crabs. It was worth the journey only to see those hedgerows, the liberal homes of unmarketable beauty...
Page 99 - A misanthropic debauchee," said Felix, lifting a chair with one hand, and holding the book open in the other, " whose notion of a hero was that he should disorder his stomach and despise mankind. His corsairs and renegades, his Alps and Manfreds, are the most paltry puppets that were ever pulled by the strings of lust and pride.
Page 105 - I'll never marry, though I should have to live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I'll never look back and say, ' I had a fine purpose once — I meant to keep my hands clean, and my soul upright, and to look truth in the face ; but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children — I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve ;' or ' My wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her feelings will be hurt if she is not thought genteel.
Page 102 - A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs, and small notions, about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.
Page 51 - Women, very properly, don't change their views, but keep to the notions in which they have been brought up. It does n't signify what they think, — they are not called upon to judge or to act. You must really leave me to take my own course in these matters, which properly belong to men. Beyond that I will gratify any wish you choose to mention. You shall have a new carriage and a pair of bays all to yourself ; you shall have the house done up in first-rate style, and I am not thinking of marrying,...
Page 10 - ... 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...
Page 161 - It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the back-ground, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which .are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons.

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