More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.
To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light, is doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts—this whispering ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace,* there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.
‘And thoughtlessness,’ pursued my aunt, ‘may lead to every crime, and will but poorly excuse our errors in the sight of God.
I do wish he would sometimes be serious. I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don’t much mind it now; but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself
He is very fond of me—almost too fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality: I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose—but I won’t complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. I sometimes liken it to a fire of dry twigs and branches compared with one of solid coal,—very bright and hot, but if it should burn itself out and leave nothing but ashes behind, what shall I do? But it won’t—it shan’t, I am determined—and surely I have power to keep it alive.
‘If she gives you her heart,’ said I, ‘you must take it thankfully, and use it well, and not pull it in pieces, and laugh in her face, because she cannot snatch it away.’
he knows he is my sun, but when he chooses to withhold his light, he would have my sky to be all darkness; he cannot bear that I should have a moon to mitigate the deprivation.
‘You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don’t rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again.’
‘Forgetfulness is not to be purchased with a wish; and I cannot bestow my esteem on all who desire it, unless they deserve it too.’
It is a hard, embittering thing to have one’s kind feelings and good intentions cast back in one’s teeth.
‘This rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals.—Will you have it?’
