Alanna Thornton’s Reviews > Far From the Madding Crowd > Status Update

“Where however happy circumstance permits its development the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.”

Lead kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on…

“Once that she had begun to cry for she hardly knew what she could not leave off for crowding thoughts she knew too well.”

"Her eyes are so miserable that she's not the same woman. Only two years ago she was a romping girl, and now she's this."

This is probably why I haven’t enjoyed this book very much…

“Deeds of endurance which seem ordinary in philosophy are rare in conduct: and Bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did not practise. She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“for a reason she would not allow herself to recognise. Oak had not once wished her free that he might marry her himself - had not once said, "I could wait for you as well as he." That was the insect sting.” Oh <3

Unfortunately I think I care about the characters less now that I did at the beginning…

“This very morning the illusion completed its disappearance, and, as it were all of a sudden, Troy hated himself. The suddenness was probably more apparent than real. A coral reef which just comes short of the ocean surface is no more to the horizon than if it had never been begun, and the mere finishing stroke is what often appears to create an event which has long been potentially an accomplished thing.”

Sheesh!! <\3

She was conquered, but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed brought low... She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard, her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth.

Oak, suddenly remembered that eight months before this time he had been fighting against fire in the same spot as desperately as he was fighting against water now - and for a futile love of the same woman. As for her -. But Oak was generous and true, and dismissed his reflections.