There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place. The single fat thing on the soil was Marian herself; and she was an importation. Of the three classes of village, the village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or by its lord (in other words, the village of a resident squires's tenantry, the village of free or copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village, farmed with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the third. But Tess set to work. Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity, was now no longer a minor feature in Mrs Angel Clare; and it sustained her.
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'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and ...
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If a way to the better there be, it lies in taking a full look at the worst.
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Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because-- Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although He thought he
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The Young Man's Best Companion, The Farrier's Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash'...
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Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight.
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Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
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Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs.
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A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
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Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.
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The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.
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The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
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The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes
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Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
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The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
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Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king.
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If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.
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Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.
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It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
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Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.
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The fundamental error of their matrimonial union that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling.
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I shall be breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.
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Once victim, always victim -- that's the law!
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A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
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The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
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Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
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Loving is misery for women always. I shall never forgive God for making me a woman and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour of owning a pretty face.
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'I can make you happy,' said he to the back of her head, across the bush. 'You shall have a piano in a year or two—farmers' wives are gettin...
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But wherefore thou alone Wherefore with theeCame not all hell broke loose Is pain to themLess pain, less to be fled, or thou than theyLess hardy to endure Courageous chief,The first in flight from pain, hadst thou allegedTo thy deserted host this cause of flight,Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive.
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It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as ...
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