Chance: A Tale in Two Parts |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
amused Anthony's asked believe Bournemouth Brighton brother cabin called Captain Anthony chance Charley chief mate child cottage course dark daughter dear deck door eyes face fact father feeling fellow felt Ferndale Flora de Barral Franklin Fyne's girl girl-friend glance gone governess hand happened head heard imagine intelligent design knew lady laughed little Fyne looked manner Marlow marriage mate matter mean mind Miss de Barral morning moved murmured mysterious nature never night once perhaps person physiognomist poop poor post-and-rail fences Powell's remarked remember Roderick round sagacity sailor saloon second mate seemed seen ship side silence smile Smith solemn sort speak stare stood street suddenly suppose surprised talk tell thing thought told tone turned understand voice waiting walked whispered wife woman women wonder words young Powell
Popular passages
Page 60 - Just about that time the word Thrift was to the fore. You know the power of words. We pass through periods dominated by this or that word — it may be development, or it may be competition, or education, or purity, or efficiency, or even sanctity. It is the word of the time.
Page 290 - There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery, that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious compassion.
Page 1 - He was not exactly remarkable," Marlow answered with his usual nonchalance. "In a general way it's very difficult for one to become remarkable. People won't take sufficient notice of one, don't you know. I remember Powell so well simply because as one of the Shipping Masters in the Port of London he dispatched me to sea on several long stages of my sailor's pilgrimage. He resembled Socrates. I mean he resembled him genuinely: that is in the face. A philosophical mind is but an accident. He reproduced...
Page 38 - It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering soulless universe.
Page 66 - Sceptre nor yet their parent the Thrift and Independence had built for themselves the usual palaces. For this abstention they were praised in silly public prints as illustrating in their management the principle of Thrift for which they were founded. The fact is that de Barral simply didn't think of it. Of course he had soon moved from Vauxhall Bridge Road. He knew enough for that. What he got hold of next was an old, enormous, rat-infested brick house in a small street off the Strand. Strangers...
Page 100 - ... girl reached, stirred, set free that faculty of unreasoning explosive terror lying locked up at the bottom of all human hearts and of the hearts of animals as well. With suddenly enlarged pupils and a movement as instinctive almost as the bounding of a startled fawn, she jumped up and found herself in the middle of the big room, exclaiming at those amazing and familiar strangers. '"What do you want?
Page 250 - Marlow raised a soothing hand. " There ! There ! I take back the ill-sounding word, with the remark, though, that cynicism seems to me a word invented by hypocrites. But let that pass. As to women, they know that the clamour for opportunities for them to become something which they cannot be is as reasonable as if mankind at large started asking for opportunities of winning immortality in this world, in which death is the very condition of life. You must understand that I am not talking here of material...
Page 85 - And if you ask me, how, wherefore, for what reason ? I will answer you : Why, by chance ! By the merest chance, as things do happen, lucky and unlucky, terrible or tender, important or unimportant ; and even things which are neither, things so completely neutral in character that you would wonder why they do happen at all if you didn't know that they, too, carry in their insignificance the seeds of further incalculable chances.
Page 178 - Her little head with its deep blue eyes, eyes of tenderness and anger under the black arch of fine eyebrows, was very still. The mouth looked very red in the white face peeping from under the veil, the little pointed chin had in its form something aggressive. Slight and even angular in her modest black dress she was an appealing and — yes — she was a desirable little figure.
Page 41 - I smiled incredulously at Marlow's ferocity; but Marlow, pausing with a whimsically retrospective air, never flinched. "Yes, yes. Even dead. And now you are shocked. You see, you are such a chivalrous masculine beggar. But there is enough of the woman in my nature to free my judgment of women from glamorous reticency. And then, why should I upset myself? A woman is not necessarily either a doll or an angel to me. She is a human being, very much like myself.