Samuel Richardson · 1534 pages
Rating: (7.1K votes)
“I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.”
“Tired of myself longing for what I have not”
“By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.”
“My heart and my hand shall never be separated.”
“You know not the value of the heart you have insulted... You, sir, I thank you, have lowered my fortunes: but, I bless God, that my mind is not sunk with my fortunes. It is, on the contrary, raised above fortune, and above you[.]”
“But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!”
“Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest in one of thy letters to entertain thee with? and thou tellest me that, when I have least to narrate, to speak in the scottish phrase, I am most diverting, a pretty compliment either to thyself , or to me, to both indeed! a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a head !”
“In other words, such is he desire which everyone has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour. You and I, Belford, have been very kind to the world in furnishing it with many opportunities to gratify its devil.”
“The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.”
“Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.”
“But these great minds cannot avois doing extraordinary things!”
“Pray , Mr Tomlinson, be seated. He took his chair over against her. I stood behind hers, that I might give him agreed-upon signals should there be occasions for them.
A thus-A wink of the left eye was to signify, Push that point, captain.
A wink of the right, and a nod was to indicate approbation of what he said.
My forefinger held up, and biting my lip, Get off of that as fast as possible.
A right forward nod, and a frown-Swear to it Captain.
My whole spread hand, To take care not to say too much on that particuliar subject.”
“You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you be the constitutions of your family marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable? Is true happiness any part of your family-view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up till Death, as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner!”
“I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there.”
“But now," says the Once-ler, "now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
“You kill me, Rose," he said melodramatically. "Every day is agony without you. Empty. Alone. I pine for you, wondering if you're even still alive.”
“I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”
“Spring passed and summer passed into harvest and in the hot autumn sun before winter comes Wang Lung sat where his father had sat against the wall. And he thought no more about anything now except his food and his drink and his land. But of his land he thought no more what harvest it would bring or what seed would be planted or of anything except of the land itself, and he stooped sometimes and gathered some of the earth up in his hand and he sat thus and held it in his hand, and it seemed full of life between his fingers. And he was content, holding it thus, and he thought of it fitfully and of his good coffin that was there; and the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.”
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