Some Great English Novels: Studies in the Art of Fiction |
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action Adam Bede admirable appearance Arthur artist attitude Austen beauty Butler chapter character charm Clara classic comedy comic Craye creator criticism Crossjay Defoe Defoe's delight dialogue Dickens Dinah Dinah Morris dramatic Egoist eloquence Emma Emma's emotion English Erewhon Ernest's exquisite eyes fancy feel Festing Jones Fielding's Flesh Frank Churchill George Eliot Ghost Meets Ghost give happy Harriet heart Hetty Hetty's human humour imagination Irish Irish R.M. Jane Jane Austen Joe Vance Jonathan Wild Joseph Vance Knightley Lady Laetitia laughter living marriage marry Martin Chuzzlewit master ment Meredith mind Miss Austen's mistress moral narrative natural ness never novelist novels observation passages passion Pecksniff Pendennis Pontifex reader realised reflection remarkable Roxana scene sentiment Sir Willoughby speech spirit story Thackeray Thackeray's Theobald things tion Todgers's Tom Jones true truth Vernon whole William de Morgan woman women writers young وو
Popular passages
Page 82 - ... and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak — the more shameful, because it is so goodhumoured and conscienceless and serene. Conscience ! What is conscience? Why accept remorse ? What is public...
Page 203 - She closed her eyes that she might feel more intensely the presence of a Love and Sympathy deeper and more tender than was breathed from the earth and sky. That was often Dinah's mode of praying in solitude. Simply to close her eyes, and to feel herself enclosed by the Divine Presence; then gradually her fears, her yearning anxieties for others, melted away like ice-crystals in a warm ocean.
Page 110 - he said. He panted. " Your name is sweet English music ! And you are well ? " The anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her eyes. He found the man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying, "I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene to welcome me than you and these children flower-gathering.
Page 140 - No, no, there was a Dart struck into the Liver; there was a secret Hell within, even all the while, when our Joy was at the highest, but more especially now, after it was all over, and when according to all appearance, I was one of the happiest...
Page 52 - ... wonderful works of nature. I do not know how it may be with others, but it is a great satisfaction to me to know, when regaling on my humble fare, that I am putting in motion the most beautiful machinery with which we have any acquaintance. I really feel at such times as if I was doing a public service. When I have wound myself up, if I may employ such a term,
Page 82 - ... are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.
Page 50 - Prooshan dwarf, and livin' skelinton, which judge her feelins wen the barrel organ played, and she was showed her own dear sister's child, the same not bein' expected from the outside picter, where it was painted quite contrairy in a livin...
Page 144 - That the very Nature of the Marriage-Contract was, in short, nothing but giving up Liberty, Estate, Authority, and every-thing, to the Man, and the Woman was indeed, a meer Woman ever after, that is to say, a Slave.
Page 195 - ... see them from the village green. He saw instead a foreground which was just as lovely — the level sunlight lying like transparent gold among the gently-curving stems of the feathered grass and the tall red sorrel, and the white umbels of the hemlocks lining the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.
Page 144 - Custom had given us of it; that I thought a Woman was a free Agent, as well as a Man, and was born free, and cou'd she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that Liberty to as much Purpose as the Men do; that the Laws of Matrimony were indeed, otherwise, and Mankind at this time, acted quite upon other Principles; and those such, that a Woman gave herself entirely away from herself, in Marriage...