The Way We Live Now, Volume 2

Front Cover
Chapman and Hall, 1875 - 320 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 137 - ... Tis well to be merry and wise, 'Tis well to be honest and true; 'Tis well to be off with the old love, Before you are on with the new.
Page 39 - In such families as his, when such results have been achieved, it is generally understood that matters shall be put right by an heiress. It has become an institution, like primogeniture, and is almost as serviceable for maintaining the proper order of things. Rank squanders money ; trade makes it ;— and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour.
Page 176 - It's worse than your wife's sister. I'm sure there's something in the Bible against it. You never would read your Bible, or you wouldn't be going to do this.
Page 24 - Melmotte was not the first vulgar man whom the Conservatives had taken by the hand, and patted on the back, and told that he was a god.
Page 122 - Trick her beams, and with new-spangled ore Flame in the forehead of the morning sky.
Page 29 - And yet these leaders of the fashion know, at any rate they believe, that he is what he is, because he has been a swindler greater than other swindlers. What follows as a natural consequence ? Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them. Then there comes the jealousy that others should be growing rich with the approval of all the world, and the natural aptitude to do what all the world approves. It seems to me that...
Page 114 - Melmotte might become as it were a conservative tribune of the people, — that he might be the realization of that hitherto hazy mixture of radicalism and old-fogyism, of which we have lately heard from a political master, whose eloquence has been employed in teaching us that progress can only be expected from those whose declared purpose is to stand still.
Page 18 - He had an idea that a few years ago a man could not have done such a thing — that he would be held to show a poor spirit should he attempt it ; but that now it did not much matter what a man did, — if only he were successful.
Page 61 - Jew, Turk, or infidel was nothing to her. She had seen enough of the world to be aware that her happiness did not lie in that direction, and could not depend in the least on the religion of her husband. Of course she would go to church herself. She always went to church. It was the proper thing to do. As to her husband, though she did not suppose that she could ever get him to church, — nor perhaps would it be desirable, — she thought that she might induce him to go nowhere, so that she might...
Page 30 - ... work. I think that men, on the whole, do live better lives than they did a hundred years ago. There is a wider spirit of justice abroad, more of mercy from one to another, a more lively charity, and, if less of religious enthusiasm, less, also, of superstition. Men will hardly go to heaven, Mr. Carbury, by following forms only because their fathers followed the same forms before them.

Bibliographic information