15 quotes
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand - ...
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; . . .
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
"[T]here's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself."
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
Instead of trying to still his fears he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come; . . .
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger — not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families . . .
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
[N]o sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)