The Works of Margaret Oliphant Quotes

“To him she had transmitted something; not her energy and love of life, but rather something of that exasperated impatience which was so often the temper of her mind in later years, though suppressed by all the powers of self-control she possessed, and modified, happily, by the versatility of her nature, which could not brood and mope over one subject, however deeply that might enter into her life. This impatience took in him the form of a fastidious intolerance, a disposition to start aside at a touch, to put up with nothing, to hear no reason even, when he was offended or crossed. He was like a restive horse, whom the mere movement of a shadow, much more the touch of a rein or the faintest vibration of a whip, sets off in the wildest gallop of nervous self-will or self-assertion. The horse, it is to be supposed, desires his own way as much as the man does when he bolts or starts. Theo”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“That Cicely’s brave undertaking ought to come to some great result in itself, that she ought to be able to make her way nobly, as her purpose was, working with her hands for the children that were not hers, bringing them up to be men, having that success in her work which is the most pleasant of all recompenses, and vindicating her sacrifice and self-devotion in the sight of all who had scoffed and doubted — this, no doubt, would be the highest and best, the most heroical and epical development of story. To change all her circumstances at a stroke, making her noble intention unnecessary, and resolving this tremendous work of hers into a gentle domestic necessity, with the “hey presto!” of the commonplace magician, by means of a marriage, is simply a contemptible expedient. But, alas! it is one which there can be no doubt is much preferred by most people to the more legitimate conclusion; and, what is more, he would be justified by knowing the accidental way is perhaps, on the whole, the most likely one, since marriages occur every day which are perfectly improbable and out of character, mere tours de force, despicable as expedients, showing the poorest invention, a disgrace to any romancist or dramatist, if they were not absolute matters of fact and true. Pardon the parenthesis, gentle reader.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“My dear, do not be hard upon me,” said poor St. John; “I acknowledge, indeed, that it was my fault.” “It was not your fault — but I don’t blame anybody. There was illness and weakness, and some people can and some people can’t,” said Cicely, with that mercy and toleration which are always, I fear, more or less, the offspring of contempt. “Let”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“Ah! but even then, even now, had it been — not Raphael, perhaps, who was one of the Shaksperian men, without passion, who do the work of gods as if they were the humanest, commonest of labourers — but such a fiery soul as that of Michelangelo whom this woman had mated! But it was not so. She could have understood the imperfection which is full of genius; what she was slow to understand was the perfection in which no genius was. But she was calmed and changed by all she had gone through, and had learned how dearly such excellence may be bought, and that life is too feeble to bear so vast a strain. Accordingly, fortified and consoled by the one gleam of glory which had crowned his brows, Helen smiled upon her painter, and took pleasure in his work, even when it ceased to be glorious. That”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“She could not go back now into the state which her mind had been in on that occasion. Everything was calmed and stilled, nay, chilled by this long interval. She could think of her Robert without the sinking of the heart — the sense of hopeless loneliness — which had moved her then. The wound had closed up: the blank, if it had not closed up, had acquired all the calmness of a long-recognized fact. She had made up her mind long since that the happiness which she could not then consent to part with, was over for her. That is the great secret of what is called resignation: to consent and agree that what you have been in the habit of calling happiness is done with; that you must be content to fill its place with something else, something less. Helen”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“but still the mention of Mrs Burton and her luxuries had a certain stinging and stimulating effect upon her. She scorned, and yet would have been pleased to emulate that splendour. The account of it put her out of patience with her own humility, notwithstanding that she took pride in that humility, and felt it more consistent with the real dignity of her position than any splendour. And”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“Never mind,” said Miss Falconer; “Miss Aytoun will sympathise with me, I am sure; every true woman must. See how they smile at our opinions — how they sneer at our judgment— ‘Oh, it’s only a woman.’ I tell you, Anne Ross, all that will be changed by-and-bye. We shall have equal freedom, equal rights — our own proper dignity and standing in the world.” “And how will it change our position?” said Anne. “How obtuse you are! Change our position! Why it will make us free — it will emancipate us — it will — —” “Particulars, particulars, Marjory?” Miss Falconer paused. “We shall not be thought unfit any longer to do what men do; our equal mental power and intelligence shall be recognised. We shall have equal rights — we shall be free!”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“Then, after all,” said Anne, “the mistake is not in what we quiet people call decorous, and proper, and feminine; but only that you, with your high spirits and courage, have the misfortune to be called Marjory, instead of Ralph; that is all; for here, you see, are Miss Aytoun and myself, and all the womankind of Strathoran to back us, who have no ambition whatever to follow the hounds, nor any very particular interest in the leading article. It is merely an individual mistake, Marjory. Acknowledge it.” “Not I,” exclaimed Miss Falconer; “it is a universal oppression of the sex. They try to reason us down first, these men; and failing that, they laugh us down: they will not be able to accomplish either, one of these days. There! how you turn upon me, with that provoking smile of yours, Anne Ross. What are you thinking of now?”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“She said to herself again with profounder fervour, that fortunately her affections had not been engaged; but there were more things than affections to be taken into consideration. Could it be possible that mystery, and perhaps imposture, of one kind or another, had crossed the sacred threshold of Grange Lane; and that people might find out and cast in Lucilla’s face the dreadful discovery that a man had been received in her house who was not what he appeared to be?”
― Margaret Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“it? Carry lay back in her corner, and felt that she would like to kiss the soft air that blew upon her, and send salutations to the trees and the sun. What could any one want more? The world was so beautiful, pain had gone out of it, and all”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“The world bore a different aspect for her; the air blew differently, the clouds floated with another motion. To look out over the plain, and away to the blue hills in the distance, with all their variety of slopes, and the infinite sweet depths of colour and atmosphere about them, was beyond all example delightful, quite enough to fill life and make it happy. In the heavenly silence she began to put her thoughts into words, as in her youth she had done always when she was deeply moved. Oh, who are they that seek pleasure in the world, in society, in feasts and merrymakings, when it is here, at their hand, ready for their enjoyment? This was her theme. The sunset upon the hills was enough for any one; he who could not find his happiness in that, where would he find it?”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“misdeeds. To tell the truth, poor Carry, being so unhappy, did not take pains to conciliate her neighbours. Some she took up with almost feverish eagerness, and she had two or three impassioned friends; but she had none of that sustaining force of personal happiness which makes it possible to bear the weariness of dull country company, and she had not taken any particular pains to please the county:”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“It was like the fresh scent of those same pines — like the aromatic peat-smoke in the air — a something native to the place, which put the troubles and the passions he had stumbled against out of the mind of the young laird. He was reconciled somehow to Scotland and to nature by little Peggy’s love for the “wudds,” and the clear ringing melody of her endless song.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“judgment, to which unfortunately Mr. Bonamy did not make much response. The Vice-Consul indeed had that half-painful, half-amused sense of being a better man than his son-in-law, which at once increases the pang of such a rivalry and makes it ludicrous. “Having known me to decline on a range of lower feelings, and a narrower heart than mine.” When a father utters in the depths of his own heart such a sentiment as this, it may be somewhat bitterly, but it must be with a sense that it is utterly ludicrous. Mr. Bonamy felt all through like the disappointed lover in the poem “Thou shalt lower to his level day by day;” for indeed Rita herself, when she became Mrs. Harry, soon came to have far less interest in matters”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“But human nature, even in a child, soon wants something more, and in Margaret the demand came very quickly. She”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“higher platform, a different atmosphere, than she had known before; and she raised herself up after them with a half-bewildered sense of elevation, not understanding how it was; and so the long days which were so hard, and which nothing in the world could save from being hard, brightened towards the end, not certainly into anything that could be called pleasure, but into a sad expansion and elevation of heart, in which faintly appeared those beginnings of profound and deep happiness which are not incompatible with grief, and yet are stronger and more inspiring than joy.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“But the answer was spoken aloud. “Tell him I forgive him, Alice. I can say so now. Tell him to repent while there is time. If you wish it, you can tell Colin and Lauderdale — they have been brothers to us. Come here, all of you,” said Meredith. “Hear my last words. Nothing is of any importance but the love of Christ. I have tried everything in the world — its pleasures and its ambitions — and — But everything except Christ is vanity. Come to Him while it is called to-day. And now come and kiss me, Alice, for I am going to die.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“something of personal and distinct identity, separate from family interests, and individual in the world, the young man’s heart and spirit — and not least, though very different, the composed friendliness of the minister, pre-occupied with his sermon, who had only a very spare amount of attention to bestow upon Huntley, and showed him that the world in general was not likely to be much absorbed by his interests, or startled by his hopes — were all very real, practical and permanent lessons. They sent him back to Norlaw an older man.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“These three scenes through which he had passed: — bowed Jaacob’s odd philosophy and startling groundwork— “Trust in nothing that you have not conquered for yourself;” Katie’s quiet home-parlor, her blush and glance of kindness, which perhaps understood his unspoken and sudden fervor as well as he did himself; and, beyond these, the sober, calm every-day minister, giving only an outside and momentary attention to those matters in which this young life had all its hopes at stake, minding his sermon, and only kindly indifferent to Huntley, had brought the youth on a long way in the education of his life. He could not have put it all into words, or explained it to the satisfaction of the philosopher; yet the shock of reality and actual life which brought him back to himself in the little smithy of Kirkbride — the warm light of Katie’s eyes which had stirred, with”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“He had taken the bias so fatal between married people of supposing when his wife disagreed with him that she did it on purpose, not because she herself thought so, but because it was opposition. Perhaps this was because of that inherent contempt for women which is a settled principle in the minds of so many men, perhaps because he had been used to a narrow mind and opinions cut and dry in the case of his sister, perhaps even because of his hot adoration and faith in Lady Markland as perfect. To continue perfect in his eyes, after their marriage, she would have needed to agree always with him, to think his thoughts. He exacted this accord with all the susceptibility of a fastidious nature, which would be content with no forced agreement, and divined in a moment when an effort was required to conform her opinions to his. He would not tolerate such an effort. He would have had her agree with him by instinct, by nature, not even by desire to please him, much less by policy. He could not endure to think of either of these means of procuring what he wanted. What he wanted was the perfect agreement of a nature which arrived at the same conclusions as his by the same means, which responded before he spoke, which was always ready to anticipate, to give him the exquisite satisfaction of feeling he was right by a perpetual seconding of all his decisions and anticipation of his thoughts. Had he married a young creature like Chatty, ready to take the impress of his more active mind, he might have found other drawbacks in her to irritate his amour propre, and probably would have despised her judgment in consequence of her perpetual agreement with him. But the fact was that he was jealous of his wife, not in the ordinary vulgar way, for which there was no possibility, but for every year of additional age, and every experience, and all the life she had led apart from him. He could not endure to think that she had formed the most of her ideas before she knew him: the thought of her past was horrible to him. A suspicion that she was thinking of that, that her mind was going back to something which he did not know, awoke a sort of madness in his brain. All this she knew by painful intuition now, as at first by discoveries which startled her very soul, and seemed to disturb the pillars of the world. She was aware of the forced control he kept over himself, not to burst”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“The vast and ambitious project of the girls for going to the country — the country or the sea-side — some one, they did not care which, of those beautiful unknown beatific regions out of London, which were to them all fairyland and countries of magic. We suppose nobody ever did enjoy the sea breezes as Agnes and Marian Atheling, in their little white bed-chamber, enjoyed the imaginary gale upon the imaginary sands, which they could perceive brightening the cheek of Mamma, and tossing about the curls of the twin-babies, at any moment of any night or day. This was to be the grand triumph of the time when Agnes came into her fortune, though even Mamma as yet had not heard of the project;”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“They were not aware themselves of their present happiness; they were all looking eagerly forward, bent upon a future which was to be so much superior to to-day, and none dreamed how little pleasure was to be got out of the realisation, in comparison with the delight they all took in the hope. They could afford so well to laugh at all their homely difficulties — to make jokes upon Mamma’s grave looks as she discovered an extravagant shilling or two in the household accounts — or found out that Susan had been wasteful in the kitchen. It was so odd, so funny, to contrast these minute cares with the golden age which was to come.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“Fairest of readers, a word with you! If you are given to morning-calls, and love to be welcomed, make your visits on a wet day!”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“It is not for the book so much, as for the uncertainty,” Agnes said, as she disconsolately took out her sewing; but in fact it was just because they had so much certainty, and so little change and commotion in their life, that they longed so much for the”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“Startled once for all out of the early calm, the serene untroubled youthful life which lies behind her in the past, Menie feels the change very hard and sore as she realises it; — from doing nought for her own comfort — from the loving sweet dependence upon others, to which her child’s heart has been accustomed — suddenly, without pause or preparation, to learn that all must depend upon herself, — to have the ghost of strife and discord, where such full harmony was wont to be, — to feel the two great loves of her nature — the loves which heretofore, in her own innocent and unsuspicious apprehension, have but strengthened and deepened each the other — set forth in antagonism, love against love, and her own heart the battle-ground. Shrinking and failing one moment, longing vainly to flee away — away anywhere into the utmost desolation, if only it were out of this conflict, — the next resolving, with such strong throbs and beatings of her heart, to take up her burden cordially, to be ever awake and alert, to subdue this giant difficulty with the force of her own strong love and ceaseless tenderness”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“A deep sorrow, and tender remembrance of the dead carried about with her in religious silence, shunning common sight and common comment, did not prevent this. It was not meet that the griefs of such a spirit should pass lightly away, or was it possible; but bordering the deep stillness of that lasting sorrow were other holds on life. Hope for Marion, the little sister of her happier days; reverent enjoyment of God’s mercies, which one who had bowed to His chastisements so long was not like to hold lightly; a sympathy, exquisitely deep and tender, with everything of nature, and much of humanity — all swelling up from the strong vitality, healthful and pure and heaven-dependant, which God had placed, as a fountain in his servant’s heart, before He laid her mighty load upon her.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“like Truth, in the well of their own solitary tears. She was now proceeding to the house of her most dear and especial friend: an ancient lady, whose strong will swayed, and whose warm heart embraced all who came within their influence, and whose healthful and vigorous spirit was softened in a manner most rare and beautiful by those delicate perceptions and sympathies which form so important an element in the constitution of genius.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“I don’t mean you individually; but Churchmen do. They treat us as if we were some strange kind of creatures, from the heart of Africa perhaps. They don’t think we are just like themselves: as well educated; meaning as well; with as much right to our own ideas.” Mr. May could scarcely restrain a laugh. “Just like themselves.” The idea of a Dissenter setting up to be as well educated, and as capable of forming an opinion, as a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a beneficed clergyman, was too novel and too foolish not to be somewhat startling as well. Mr. May was aware that human nature is strangely blind to its own deficiencies, but was it possible that any delusion could go so far as this? He did laugh a little — just the ghost of a laugh — at the idea. But what is the use of making any serious opposition to such a statement? The very fact of contesting the assumption seemed to give it a certain weight. “Whenever this is done,” said Phœbe, with serene philosophy, “I think you may expect a revulsion of feeling. The class to which papa belongs is very friendly to the Established Church, and wishes to do her every honour.” “Is it indeed? We ought to be much gratified,” said Mr. May. Phœbe gave him a quick glance, but he composed his face and met her look meekly. It actually diverted him from his pre-occupation, and that is a great deal to say. “We would willingly do her any honour; we would willingly be friends, even look up to her, if that would please her,” added Phœbe, very gravely, conscious of the importance of what she was saying; “but when we see clergymen, and common persons also, who have never had one rational thought on the subject, always setting us down as ignorant and uncultured, because we are Dissenters — —” “But no one does that,” said Ursula, soothingly,”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“most powerful exertions in behalf of friends not only fail to procure their gratitude, but sometimes convert them into enemies, and do actual harm; which is a discovery which can only be made by those who devote themselves, as Miss Marjoribanks had done, to the good of the human species. She had done everything for the best, and yet it had not always turned out for the best; and even the people who had been most ready to appeal to her for assistance in their need, had proved the readiest to accuse her when something disagreeable happened, and to say “It was your fault.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“ONE FYTTE OF Lucilla’s history is here ended, and another is to be told. We have recorded her beginning in all the fulness of youthful confidence and undaunted trust in her own resources; and have done our best to show that in the course of organising society Miss Marjoribanks, like all other benefactors of their kind, had many sacrifices to make, and had to undergo the mortification of finding out that many of her most able efforts turned to other people’s profit and went directly against herself. She began the second period of her career with, to some certain extent, that sense of failure which is inevitable to every high intelligence after a little intercourse with the world. She had succeeded in a great many things, but yet she had not succeeded in all; and she had found out that the”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant