The Margaret Oliphant Collection Quotes

“MR. PIGEON WAS A HEAVY orator; he was a tall man, badly put together, with a hollow crease across his waistcoat, which looked very much as if he might be folded in two, and so laid away out of mischief.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Margaret Oliphant Collection

“WAS THIS THEN THE CONCLUSION of all things—that there was nothing so perfect that it was worth a man’s while to struggle for it; that any officious interference with the recognised and existing was a mistake; that nothing was either the best or the worst, but all things mere degrees in a round of the comparative, in which a little more or a little less was of no importance, and the most strenuous efforts tended to failure as much as indifference?”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Margaret Oliphant Collection

“However it was, he was exhausted with the struggle, his strength was worn out. That lull of pain which does not mean any cure, or even any beginning of healing, but is merely a sign that the power of the sufferer to endure has come to its limit, gave him a kind of rest.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Margaret Oliphant Collection