The Works of George Eliot: Impressions of Theophrastis SuchW. Blackwood, 1880 |
Common terms and phrases
acquaintances ADAM BEDE admiration Adrastus agreeable ancient burlesque carry Channel Islands Christianity consciousness consider DANIEL DERONDA desire effect egoism English expected fact father feel FELIX HOLT felt Ganymede GEORGE ELIOT give Grampus habit Hinze human ideas ignorant illusion imagination impression insist interest Jews judgment kind knowledge known least Lentulus less living look Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis man's mankind meaning memory ment mental Merman MIDDLEMARCH mind mistake Mixtus modern moral nature neighbours ness never object observation once opinion original Pepin perhaps persons philosopher poets political poor present race regard religion religious remark ridiculous SCENES OF CLERICAL scorn seemed sense SILAS MARNER sion social society sort spirit subjects surprise taste THEOPHRASTUS things thought tion truth uncon Volvox Vorticella WILLIAM BLACKWOOD wish woman words worthy writing young youth
Popular passages
Page 197 - Callista, it is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes ; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching memories and...
Page 291 - I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh : who are Israelites ; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises : whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
Page 37 - To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong government which could maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word "government" in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my effective religion, in contrast with the word
Page 216 - Fool's part by the side of Lear. The chief scenes get filled with erring heroes, guileful usurpers, persecuted discoverers, dying deliverers : everywhere the protagonist has a part pregnant with doom. The comedy sinks to an accessory, and if there are loud laughs they seem a convulsive transition from sobs ; or if the comedy is touched with a gentle lovingness, the panoramic scene is one where "Sadness is a kind of mirth So mingled as if mirth did make us sad And sadness merry.
Page 41 - ... a canal close by; the very heights laugh with corn in August, or lift the plough-team against the sky in September. Then comes a crowd of burly navvies with pickaxes and barrows; and while hardly a wrinkle is made in the fading mother's face, or a new curve of health in the blooming girl's, the hills are cut through or the breaches between them spanned, we choose our level, and the white steam-pennon Hies along it.
Page 80 - Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
Page 232 - What do you mean by a thoroughly moral man?' said I. 'Oh, I suppose every one means the same by that,' said Melissa, with a slight air of rebuke. 'Sir Gavial is an excellent family man - quite blameless there; and so charitable round his place at Tiptop. Very different from Mr Barabbas,4 whose life, my husband tells me, is most objectionable, with actresses and that sort of thing.
Page 233 - I wish that this narrow use of words which are wanted in their full meaning were confined to women like Melissa. Seeing that " morality " and "morals," under their alias of Ethics, are the subject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing matter of dispute — seeing that the most famous book ever written on Ethics, and forming a chief study in our colleges, allies ethical with political science, or that which treats of the constitution and prosperity of states, one might expect that...
Page 278 - ... since they rejected Christianity. All which is mirrored in an analogy, namely, that of the Irish, also a servile race, who have rejected Protestantism though it has been repeatedly urged on them by fire and sword and penal laws, and whose place in the moral scale may be judged by our advertisements, where the clause, "No Irish need apply," parallels the sentence which for many polite persons sums up the question of Judaism — "I never didl&e.
Page 234 - ... duties of man lie quite outside both Morality and Religion — the one of these consisting in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with God, which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest conduct toward men. With such a classification as this it is no wonder, considering the strong reaction of language on thought, that many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, are far...