The Makers of English Fiction |
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Adam Bede Anne Brontė artist Becky Sharp become better character Charlotte Brontė charm creative creatures criticism death Defoe delightful Dickens doubt drama element Emily Brontė enduring English fiction expression faith fame feel force genius genuine George Eliot George Meredith gift greatest Hardy Hardy's heart Hetty Sorrel human humour imagination invention Jane Austen Jane Eyre kind Kingsley knew labour less literary literature lives Mark Rutherford masculine ment method mind moral nature ness never novel novelist once painted passages passion pathos Patrick Brontė perfect philosophy phrase picture poetry praise produced qualities rank rare reader realism religious Robert Elsmere romance scarcely scene Scott sense sentiment Shakespeare soul speaks spirit spite Stevenson story style sympathy temper Thackeray Thackeray's theme things thought tion touch tragedy true truth ture virtue vision vital vivid whole woman women write written wrote Wuthering Heights
Popular passages
Page 44 - That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going ; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
Page 266 - UNDER the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be ; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.
Page 122 - His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.
Page 211 - I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke. I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain, And pronounced on, the rest of his handwork, — returned him again His creation's approval or censure; I spoke as I saw. I report, as a man may of God's work: all's love, yet all's law.
Page 221 - The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.
Page 222 - On older trees still than these huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted ; the lichen ate the vigour of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling.
Page 92 - No more firing was heard at Brussels — the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city : and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.
Page 316 - I trust is their destiny, to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age, to see, to think and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous...
Page 61 - I have repeatedly laid down my future work to scale, divided it into volumes and chapters, and endeavoured to construct a story which I meant should evolve itself gradually and strikingly, maintain suspense, and stimulate curiosity; and which, finally, should terminate in a striking catastrophe.
Page 132 - You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind : in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test - some, it is said, die under it - you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive.