Born in Exile Quotes

“Nothing great would come of his endeavours, but what he aimed at he steadily perfected.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Conscience is the same in my view as an inherited disease which may possibly break out on any most innocent physical indulgence.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Life utterly denied to me the satisfaction of my strongest instincts, so long as I plodded on without cause of shame; the moment I denied my faith, and put on a visage of brass, great possibilities opened before me”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“( Peak, reflections on his brother and sister)

But their characteristics no longer gravely offended him, and he willingly recognised the homespun worth which their lives displayed.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“I seem anything but lovable. I don't underrate my powers—rather the opposite, no doubt; but what I always seem to lack is the gift of pleasing—moral grace. My strongest emotions seem to be absorbed in revolt; for once that I feel tenderly, I have a hundred fierce, resentful, tempestuous moods. To be suave and smiling in common intercourse costs me an effort.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“You have been trying to adapt yourself,' she said, 'to a world for which you are by nature unfitted. Your place is in the new order; by turning back to the old, you condemned yourself to a wasted life.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“A powerful intellect by no means implies a corresponding development of the moral sense.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Yet in Peak's case all appearances are against him—just because he is of low birth, has no means, and wants desperately to get into society. The fellow is a scoundrel; I am convinced of it. Yet his designs may be innocent.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Buckland's class-prejudice asserted itself with brutal vigour now that it had moral indignation for an ally.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Oftener than not, she still thought of Peak as he appeared some eleven years ago--an evident plebeian, without manners, without a redeeming grace.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“To flatter the proletariat is to fight against all the good that still characterises educated England—against reverence for the beautiful, against magnanimity, against enthusiasm of mind, heart, and soul.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Everything he undertook was easy to him, and by a pleasant self-deception he made the passing of a school task his augury of success in greater things.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“We all know perfectly well that happiness is the conscious exertion of individual powers”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“And remember, to admit that the multitude are fools is not the same thing as to deny the possibility of progress.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Pure literature seemed beyond his scope, yet he was constantly endeavouring to express himself.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“It took a long time before I had taught myself how to move and speak like one of the class to which I belonged by right of intellect.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“He pronounced his Latin in the new-old way, with Continental vowels. The effect of this on an Englishman's lips is always more or less pedantic, and in his case it was intolerable.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile

“Hence a rather excessive politeness, such as the man who sets much store on breeding exhibits to those who may at any moment, even in a fraction of a syllable, prove themselves his inferiors.”
― George Gissing, Born in Exile