Chapter I: Part 1

QUOTES AND IMAGES FROM GEORGE MEREDITH

THE WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH

PROSE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

George Meredith in 1893

The Sitting Room, Flint Cottage--May 18th 1909

Age 35

Age 68

Age 69

Age 72

Age 80

A lover must have his delusions, just as a man must have a skin

A madman gets madder when you talk reason to him

A night that had shivered repose

A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin

A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger

A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting

A tear would have overcome him--She had not wept

A tragic comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver

A fleet of South-westerly rain-clouds had been met in mid-sky

A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry

A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion

A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman

A woman's at the core of every plot man plotteth

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power

A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird

A kindly sense of superiority

A young philosopher's an old fool!

A bird that won't roast or boil or stew

A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense

A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle

A great oration may be a sedative

A very doubtful benefit

A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side

A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans

A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization

A style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth

A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind wit

A fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin

A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar

A common age once, when he married her; now she had grown old

A share of pity for the objects she despised

A woman rises to her husband. But a man is what he is

A stew's a stew, and not a boiling to shreds

A marriage without love is dishonour

A plunge into the deep is of little moment

A sixpence kindly meant is worth any crown-piece that's grudged

A man to be trusted with the keys of anything

A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon

A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines

A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it

A man who rejected medicine in extremity

A lady's company-smile

A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot

A youth who is engaged in the occupation of eating his heart

A whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret

A superior position was offered her by her being silent

A contented Irishman scarcely seems my countryman

Abject sense of the lack of a circumference

Above all things I detest the writing for money

Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below

Absolute freedom could be the worst of perils

Accidents are the specific for averting the maladies of age

Accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory

Accounting for it, is not the same as excusing

Accustomed to be paid for by his country

Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art

Active despair is a passion that must be superseded

Add on a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to follow

Adept in the lie implied

Admirable scruples of an inveterate borrower

Admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds

Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight

Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality

Advised not to push at a shut gate

Affected misapprehensions

Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening

After forty, men have married their habits

After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship

After a big blow, a very little one scarcely counts

Agostino was enjoying the smoke of paper cigarettes

Ah! how sweet to waltz through life with the right partner

Ah! we're in the enemy's country now

Ah! we fall into their fictions

Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity

Alike believe that Providence is for them

All of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement

All concessions to the people have been won from fear

All passed too swift for happiness

All women are the same--Know one, know all

All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked

All are friends who sit at table

All flattery is at somebody's expense

Allowed silly sensitiveness to prevent the repair

Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon

Always the shout for more produced it ("News")

Am I ill? I must be hungry!

Am I thy master, or thou mine?

Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning

Amiable mirror as being wilfully ruffled to confuse

Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes

Amused after their tiresome work of slaughter

An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer

An obedient creature enough where he must be

An angry woman will think the worst

An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top

An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity

An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them!

And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence

And so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true

And he passed along the road, adds the Philosopher

And, ladies, if you will consent to be likened to a fruit

And her voice, against herself, was for England

And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain)

And it's one family where the dog is pulled by the collar

And not any of your grand ladies can match my wife at home

And to these instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous"

And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat

And never did a stroke of work in my life

And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end?

Anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusement

Anguish to think of having bent the knee for nothing

Anticipate opposition by initiating measures

Any man is in love with any woman

Any excess pushes to craziness

Appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of convictions

Appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker

Arch-devourer Time

Are we practical?' penetrates the bosom of an English audience

Aristocratic assumption of licence

Arm'd with Fear the Foe finds passage to the vital part

Arrest the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer

Art of despising what he coveted

Art of speaking on politics tersely

As when nations are secretly preparing for war

As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness

As secretive as they are sensitive

As the Lord decided, so it would end! "Oh, delicious creed!"

As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!

As faith comes--no saying how; one swears by them

As if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula

As little trouble as the heath when the woods are swept

As if the age were the injury!

As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them

As fair play as a woman's lord could give her

As for comparisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire

As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos

As becomes them, they do not look ahead

Ashamed of letting his ears be filled with secret talk

Ask not why, where reason never was

Ask pardon of you, without excusing myself

Assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights

At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly

At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we can have

Attacked my conscience on the cowardly side

Automatic creature is subject to the laws of its construction

Avoid the position that enforces publishing

Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself

Bad laws are best broken

Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good

Bade his audience to beware of princes

Bandied the weariful shuttlecock of gallantry

Barriers are for those who cannot fly

Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues

Be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles

Be what you seem, my little one

Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone

Be good and dull, and please everybody

Be the woman and have the last word!

Bear in mind that we are sentimentalists--The eye is our servant

Beauchamp's career

Beautiful servicelessness

Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness

Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved

Beauty is rare; luckily is it rare

Because you loved something better than me

Because he stood so high with her now he feared the fall

Because men can't abide praise of another man

Becoming air of appropriation that made it family history

Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence

Began the game of Pull

Beginning to have a movement to kiss the whip

Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beauty

Being heard at night, in the nineteenth century

Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women

Belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience

Believed in her love, and judged it by the strength of his own

Bent double to gather things we have tossed away

Better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet

Between love grown old and indifference ageing to love

Beware the silent one of an assembly!

Beyond a plot of flowers, a gold-green meadow dipped to a ridge

Bitten hard at experience, and know the value of a tooth

Borrower to be dancing on Fortune's tight-rope above the old abyss

Botched mendings will only make them worse

Bound to assure everybody at table he was perfectly happy

Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls

Boys, of course--but men, too!

Boys are unjust

Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them

Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it

Brains will beat Grim Death if we have enough of them

Brief negatives are not re-assuring to a lover's uneasy mind

British hunger for news; second only to that for beef

Brittle is foredoomed

Brotherhood among the select who wear masks instead of faces

But I leave it to you

But a woman must now and then ingratiate herself

But great, powerful London--the new universe to her spirit

But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death

But the flower is a thing of the season; the flower drops off

But you must be beautiful to please some men

But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly

But the key to young men is the ambition, or, in the place of it.....

But love for a parent is not merely duty

But a great success is full of temptations

But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)

But is there such a thing as happiness

But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing

By our manner of loving we are known

By forbearance, put it in the wrong

By resisting, I made him a tyrant

By nature incapable of asking pardon

Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college

Call of the great world's appetite for more (Invented news)

Calm fanaticism of the passion of love

Can you not be told you are perfect without seeking to improve

Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted

Can a man go farther than his nature?

Cannot be any goodness unless it is a practiced goodness

Canvassing means intimidation or corruption

Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing

Capricious potentate whom they worship

Careful not to smell of his office

Carry explosives and must particularly guard against sparks

Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask

Causes him to be popularly weighed

Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies

Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene

Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists

Charitable mercifulness; better than sentimental ointment

Charity that supplied the place of justice was not thanked

Chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness

Cheerful martyr

Childish faith in the beneficence of the unseen Powers who feed us

Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly

Circumstances may combine to make a whisper as deadly as a blow

Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine

Claim for equality puts an end to the priceless privileges

Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession

Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset

Cold curiosity

Cold charity to all

Come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything

Comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity

Command of countenance the Countess possessed

Commencement of a speech proves that you have made the plunge

Common voice of praise in the mouths of his creditors

Common sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation

Compared the governing of the Irish to the management of a horse

Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered

Compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement

Complacent languor of the wise youth

Compliment of being outwitted by their own offspring

Compromise is virtual death

Conduct is never a straight index where the heart's involved

Confess no more than is necessary, but do everything you can

Confident serenity inspired by evil prognostications

Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent

Consent to take life as it is

Consent of circumstances

Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath

Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure

Constitutionally discontented

Consult the family means--waste your time

Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war

Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther

Continued trust in the man--is the alternative of despair

Convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury

Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies

Convictions are generally first impressions

Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity

Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving

Could we--we might be friends

Could peruse platitudes upon that theme with enthusiasm

Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career

Could the best of men be simply--a woman's friend?

Could have designed this gabbler for the mate

Could affect me then, without being flung at me

Country can go on very well without so much speech-making

Country enclosed us to make us feel snug in our own importance

Country prizing ornaments higher than qualities

Courage to grapple with his pride and open his heart was wanting

Cover of action as an escape from perplexity

Cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men

Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history)

Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change

Critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear

Critical in their first glance at a prima donna

Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite

Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen

Dahlia, the perplexity to her sister's heart, lay stretched....

Damsel who has lost the third volume of an exciting novel

Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass

Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction

Days when you lay on your back and the sky rained apples

Dead Britons are all Britons, but live Britons are not quite brothers

Death is always next door

Death within which welcomed a death without

Death is only the other side of the ditch

Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes

Debit was eloquent, he was unanswerable

Decency's a dirty petticoat in the Garden of Innocence

Decent insincerity

Decline to practise hypocrisy

Dedicated to the putrid of the upper circle

Deeds only are the title

Deep as a mother's, pure as a virgin's, fiery as a saint's

Defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends

Delay in thine undertaking Is disaster of thy own making

Depending for dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal

Depreciating it after the fashion of chartered hypocrites.

Desire of it destroyed it

Despises hostile elements and goes unpunished

Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance

Determine that the future is in our debt, and draw on it

Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough

Detested titles, invented by the English

Developing stiff, solid, unobtrusive men, and very personable women

Dialectical stiffness

Dialogue between Nature and Circumstance

Did not know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed

Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings

Dignitary, and he passed under the bondage of that position

Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man

Discover the writers in a day when all are writing!

Discreet play with her eyelids in our encounters

Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices

Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur

Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable

Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked

Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war

Dithyrambic inebriety of narration

Divided lovers in presence

Do I serve my hand? or, Do I serve my heart?

Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men?

Dogmatic arrogance of a just but ignorant man

Dogs die more decently than we men

Dogs' eyes have such a sick look of love

Dose he had taken was not of the sweetest

Drank to show his disdain of its powers

Dreaded as a scourge, hailed as a refreshment (Scandal-sheet)

Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage

Drink is their death's river, rolling them on helpless

Dudley was not gifted to read behind words and looks

Earl of Cressett fell from his coach-box in a fit

Eating, like scratching, only wants a beginning

Eccentric behaviour in trifles

Effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative

Efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful

Elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors

Embarrassments of an uncongenial employment

Emilia alone of the party was as a blot to her

Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker

Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women

Empty stomachs are foul counsellors

Empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him

Enamoured young men have these notions

Enemy's laugh is a bugle blown in the night

Energy to something, that was not to be had in a market

England's the foremost country of the globe

English antipathy to babblers

English maids are domesticated savage animals

Enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness

Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism

Enthusiasm has the privilege of not knowing monotony

Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring

Envy of the man of positive knowledge

Equally acceptable salted when it cannot be had fresh

Everlastingly in this life the better pays for the worse

Every failure is a step advanced

Every woman that's married isn't in love with her husband

Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal

Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach

Exceeding variety and quantity of things money can buy

Excellent is pride; but oh! be sure of its foundations

Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality

Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony

Expectations dupe us, not trust

Explaining of things to a dull head

Externally soft and polished, internally hard and relentless

Exuberant anticipatory trustfulness

Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture

Eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are

Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon

Failures oft are but advising friends

Faith works miracles. At least it allows time for them

Fantastical

Far higher quality is the will that can subdue itself to wait

Fast growing to be an eccentric by profession

Fatal habit of superiority stopped his tongue

Father and she were aware of one another without conversing

Father used to say, four hours for a man, six for a woman

Favour can't help coming by rotation

Fear nought so much as Fear itself

Feel no shame that I do not feel!

Feel they are not up to the people they are mixing with

Feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being

Feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable

Fell to chatting upon the nothings agreeably and seriously

Feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness

Feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted

Festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers

Few feelings are single on this globe

Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends

Fiddle harmonics on the sensual strings

Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted

Fine Shades were still too dominant at Brookfield

Finishing touches to the negligence

Fire smoothes the creases

Fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody

Fit of Republicanism in the nursery

Flashes bits of speech that catch men in their unguarded corner

Flung him, pitied him, and passed on

Foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea

Foe can spoil my face; he beats me if he spoils my temper

Foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment

Fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl

Foolish trick of thinking for herself

For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too

Forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it

Forgetfulness is like a closing sea

Fortitude leaned so much upon the irony

Forty seconds too fast, as if it were a capital offence

Found by the side of the bed, inanimate, and pale as a sister of death

Found it difficult to forgive her his own folly

Found that he 'cursed better upon water'

Fourth of the Georges

Frankness as an armour over wariness

Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant

Friend he would not shake off, but could not well link with

Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two

From head to foot nothing better than a moan made visible

Frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged

Full-o'-Beer's a hasty chap

Fun, at any cost, is the one object worth a shot

Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?"

Generally he noticed nothing

Gentlefolks like straight-forwardness in their inferiors

Gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little

Gentleman in a good state of preservation

Get back what we give

Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant Duplicity

Give our courage as hostage for the fulfilment of what we hope

Give our consciences to the keeping of the parsons

Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea

Glimpse of her whole life in the horrid tomb of his embrace

Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble

Good and evil work together in this world

Good nature, and means no more harm than he can help

Good nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted

Good-bye to sorrow for a while--Keep your tears for the living

Good maxim for the wrathful--speak not at all

Good jokes are not always good policy

Goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character

Gossip always has some solid foundation, however small

Government of brain; not sufficient Insurrection of heart

Gradations appear to be unknown to you

Graduated naturally enough the finer stages of self-deception

Grand air of pitying sadness

Gratitude never was a woman's gift

Gratuitous insult

Gravely reproaching the tobacconist for the growing costliness of cigars

Greater our successes, the greater the slaves we become

Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman

Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth

Grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose

Grossly unlike in likeness (portraits)

Habit had legalized his union with her

Habit of antedating his sagacity

Habit, what a sacred and admirable thing it is

Had got the trick of lying, through fear of telling the truth

Had come to be her lover through being her husband

Had Shakespeare's grandmother three Christian names?

Had taken refuge in their opera-glasses

Half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole

Half a dozen dozen left

Half designingly permitted her trouble to be seen

Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance

Happy the woman who has not more to speak

Happy in privation and suffering if simply we can accept beauty

Hard to bear, at times unbearable

Hard enough for a man to be married to a fool

Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs

Haremed opinion of the unfitness of women

Hated one thing alone--which was 'bother'

Hated tears, considering them a clog to all useful machinery

Hates a compromise

Haunted many pillows

Have her profile very frequently while I am conversing with her

Having contracted the fatal habit of irony

He was not alive for his own pleasure

He, by insisting, made me a rebel

He bowed to facts

He grunted that a lying clock was hateful to him

He has been tolerably honest, Tom, for a man and a lover

He kept saying to himself, 'to-morrow I will tell'

He postponed it to the next minute and the next

He prattled, in the happy ignorance of compulsion

He was in love, and subtle love will not be shamed and smothered

He thinks that the country must be saved by its women as well

He is in the season of faults

He had his character to maintain

He squandered the guineas, she patiently picked up the pence

He neared her, wooing her; and she assented

He judged of others by himself

He is inexorable, being the guilty one of the two

He had to shake up wrath over his grievances

He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them

He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go

He loathed a skulker

He clearly could not learn from misfortune

He thinks or he chews

He would neither retort nor defend himself

He whipped himself up to one of his oratorical frenzies

He put no question to anybody

He took small account of the operations of the feelings

He began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginning

He never explained

He never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it

He was the prisoner of his word

He wants the whip; ought to have had it regularly

He had wealth for a likeness of strength

He was a figure on a horse, and naught when off it

He did not vastly respect beautiful women

He sinks terribly when he sinks at all

He was not a weaver of phrases in distress

He lies as naturally as an infant sucks

He tried to gather his ideas, but the effort was like that of a light dreamer

He runs too much from first principles to extremes

He gained much by claiming little

He had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration

He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity

He smoked, Lord Avonley said of the second departure

He had no recollection of having ever dined without drinking wine

He stormed her and consented to be beaten

He will be a part of every history (the fool)

He was the maddest of tyrants--a weak one

He had to go, he must, he has to be always going

He never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents

He had expected romance, and had met merchandize

He condensed a paragraph into a line

He lost the art of observing himself

He had neat phrases, opinions in packets

He's good from end to end, and beats a Christian hollow (a hog)

Hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law

Heart to keep guard and bury the bones you tossed him

Heartily she thanked the girl for the excuse to cry

Hearts that make one soul do not separately count their gifts

Heathen vindictiveness declaring itself holy

Heights of humour beyond laughter

Her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather

Her vehement fighting against facts

Her peculiar tenacity of the sense of injury

Her feelings--trustier guides than her judgement in this crisis

Her final impression likened him to a house locked up and empty

Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter landscape

Her singing struck a note of grateful remembered delight

Her duel with Time

Here, where he both wished and wished not to be

Here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate

Hermits enamoured of wind and rain

Hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman

Heroine, in common with the hero, has her ambition to be of use

Herself, content to be dull if he might shine

Hesitating strangeness that sometimes gathers during absences

Himself in the worn old surplice of the converted rake

His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means

His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody

His gaze and one of his ears, if not the pair, were given

His ridiculous equanimity

His alien ideas were not unimpressed by the picture

His restored sense of possession

His wife alone, had, as they termed it, kept him together

His equanimity was fictitious

His fancy performed miraculous feats

His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence

His apparent cynicism is sheer irritability

Holding to the refusal, for the sake of consistency

Holding to his work after the strain's over--That tells the man

Holy images, and other miraculous objects are sold

Honest creatures who will not accept a lift from fiction

Hope which lies in giving men a dose of hysterics

Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman

Hopes of a coming disillusion that would restore him

Hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic

How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!

How Success derides Ambition!

How many degrees from love gratitude may be

How immensely nature seems to prefer men to women!

How little a thing serves Fortune's turn

How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?

How many instruments cannot clever women play upon

How little we mean to do harm when we do an injury

Hug the hatred they packed up among their bundles

Human nature to feel an interest in the dog that has bitten you

Humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment

Huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded

Hushing together, they agreed that it had been a false move

I do not defend myself ever

I have learnt as much from light literature as from heavy

I have and hold--you shall hunger and covet

I cannot get on with Gibbon

I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me

I married a cook She expects a big appetite

I want no more, except to be taught to work

I detest anything that has to do with gratitude

I know nothing of imagination

I haven't got the pluck of a flea

I hate old age It changes you so

I would cut my tongue out, if it did you a service

I can't think brisk out of my breeches

I look on the back of life

I never pay compliments to transparent merit

I always respected her; I never liked her

I give my self, I do not sell

I cannot live a life of deceit. A life of misery--not deceit

I was discontented, and could not speak my discontent

I laughed louder than was necessary

I had to cross the park to give a lesson

I cannot delay; but I request you, that are here privileged

I ain't a speeder of matrimony

I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care

I rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!

I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so?

I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France

I take off my hat, Nan, when I see a cobbler's stall

I would wait till he flung you off, and kneel to you

I had to make my father and mother live on potatoes

I am not ashamed

I hope I am not too hungry to discriminate

I cannot say less, and will say no more

I wanted a hero

I do not see it, because I will not see it

I can pay clever gentlemen for doing Greek for me

I never saw out of a doll-shop, and never saw there

I 'm the warming pan, as legitimately I should be

I detest enthusiasm

I baint done yet

I know that your father has been hearing tales told of me

I never knew till this morning the force of No in earnest

I hate sleep: I hate anything that robs me of my will

I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them

I who respect the state of marriage by refusing

I make a point of never recommending my own house

I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe

I am a discordant instrument I do not readily vibrate

I don't count them against women (moods)

I 'm a bachelor, and a person--you're married, and an object

I did, replied Evan. 'I told a lie.'

I never see anything, my dear

I always wait for a thing to happen first

I'll come as straight as I can

I'm for a rational Deity

I'm in love with everything she wishes! I've got the habit

Idea is the only vital breath

Ideas in gestation are the dullest matter you can have

If we are really for Nature, we are not lawless

If there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?

If you kneel down, who will decline to put a foot on you?

If I love you, need you care what anybody else thinks

If we are to please you rightly, always allow us to play First

If he had valued you half a grain less, he might have won you

If the world is hostile we are not to blame it

If we are robbed, we ask, How came we by the goods?

If thou wouldst fix remembrance-- thwack!

If I'm struck, I strike back

If only been intellectually a little flexible in his morality

If you have this creative soul, be the slave of your creature

If I do not speak of payment

Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm

Imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days

Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us

Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind

Impossible for him to think that women thought

Impossible for us women to comprehend love without folly in man

Impudent boy's fling at superiority over the superior

In the pay of our doctors

In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt

In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins

In bottle if not on draught (oratory)

In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck!

In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood..."

In Italy, a husband away, ze friend takes title

In truth she sighed to feel as he did, above everybody

Incapable of putting the screw upon weak excited nature

Incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly

Inclined to act hesitation in accepting the aid she sought

Increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got

Indirect communication with heaven

Inducement to act the hypocrite before the hypocrite world

Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked

Infallibility of our august mother

Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?

Infatuated men argue likewise, and scandal does not move them

Inferences are like shadows on the wall

Inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him

Informed him that he never played jokes with money, or on men

Injury forbids us to be friends again

Innocence and uncleanness may go together

Insistency upon there being two sides to a case--to every case

Intellectual contempt of easy dupes

Intensely communicative, but inarticulate

Intentions are really rich possessions

Intimations of cowardice menacing a paralysis of the will

Intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped would clash

Intrusion of hard material statements, facts

Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples

Ireland 's the sore place of England

Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances

Irishmen will never be quite sincere

Ironical fortitude

Irony in him is only eulogy standing on its head

Irony that seemed to spring from aversion

Irony instead of eloquence

Irony provoked his laughter more than fun

Irritability at the intrusion of past disputes

Is he jealous? 'Only when I make him, he is.'

Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?

Is it any waste of time to write of love?

It 's us hard ones that get on best in the world

It was harder to be near and not close

It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling

It is no insignificant contest when love has to crush self-love

It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith

It was as if she had been eyeing a golden door shut fast

It is the best of signs when women take to her

It was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach

It rarely astonishes our ears It illumines our souls

It goes at the lifting of the bridegroom's little finger

It was an honest buss, but dear at ten thousand

It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us

It was in a time before our joyful era of universal equality

It is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him

It was her prayer to heaven that she might save a doctor's bill

It is better for us both, of course

It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age

It is no use trying to conceal anything from him

It's a fool that hopes for peace anywhere

It's no use trying to be a gentleman if you can't pay for it

Italians were like women, and wanted--a real beating

Its glee at a catastrophe; its poor stock of mercy

January was watering and freezing old earth by turns

Judging of the destiny of man by the fate of individuals

Just bad inquirin' too close among men

Keep passion sober, a trotter in harness

Kelts, as they are called, can't and won't forgive injuries

Kindness is kindness, all over the world

Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men

Lack of precise words admonished him of the virtue of silence

Land and beasts! They sound like blessed things

Lawyers hold the keys of the great world

Lay no petty traps for opportunity

Laying of ghosts is a public duty

Leader accustomed to count ahead upon vapourish abstractions

Learn all about them afterwards, ay, and make the best of them

Learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas

Led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her

Lend him your own generosity

Lengthened term of peace bred maggots in the heads of the people

Lest thou commence to lie--be dumb!

Let but the throb be kept for others-- That is the one secret

Let never Necessity draw the bow of our weakness

Let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life

Levelling a finger at the taxpayer

Lies are usurers' coin we pay for ten thousand per cent

Life is the burlesque of young dreams

Like a woman, who would and would not, and wanted a master

Like an ill-reared fruit, first at the core it rotteth

Limit was two bottles of port wine at a sitting

Listened to one another, and blinded the world

Literature is a good stick and a bad horse

Little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a dead body go by

Littlenesses of which women are accused

Loathing of artifice to raise emotion

Loathing for speculation

Longing for love and dependence

Look within, and avoid lying

Look well behind

Look backward only to correct an error of conduct in future

Looked as proud as if he had just clapped down the full amount

Looking on him was listening

Loudness of the interrogation precluded thought of an answer

Love, with his accustomed cunning

Love the poor devil

Love dies like natural decay

Love the children of Erin, when not fretted by them

Love of men and women as a toy that I have played with

Love of pleasure keeps us blind children

Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy

Love that shrieks at a mortal wound, and bleeds humanly

Love discerns unerringly what is and what is not duty

Love must needs be an egoism

Love is a contagious disease

Love the difficulty better than the woman

Love, that has risen above emotion, quite independent of craving

Love's a selfish business one has work in hand

Loves his poets, can almost understand what poetry means

Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off

Lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools

Made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity

Madness that sane men enamoured can be struck by

Magnificent in generosity; he had little humaneness

Magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity

Make no effort to amuse him. He is always occupied

Make a girl drink her tears, if they ain't to be let fall

Making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar

Man with a material object in aim, is the man of his object

Man who beats his wife my first question is, 'Do he take his tea?'

Man owes a duty to his class

Man who helps me to read the world and men as they are

Man without a penny in his pocket, and a gizzard full of pride

Mankind is offended by heterodoxy in mean attire

Mare would do, and better than a dozen horses

Mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself

Marriage is an awful thing, where there's no love

Married at forty, and I had to take her shaped as she was

Married a wealthy manufacturer-- bartered her blood for his money

Martyrs of love or religion are madmen

Material good reverses its benefits the more nearly we clasp it

Matter that is not nourishing to brains

Maxims of her own on the subject of rising and getting the worm

May lull themselves with their wakefulness

May not one love, not craving to be beloved?

Meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience

Meditations upon the errors of the general man, as a cover

Memory inspired by the sensations

Men overweeningly in love with their creations

Men do not play truant from home at sixty years of age

Men they regard as their natural prey

Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished

Men must fight: the law is only a quieter field for them

Men in love are children with their mistresses

Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen

Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations

Men had not pleased him of late

Mental and moral neuters

Metaphysician's treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise

Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of battle

Mika! you did it in cold blood?

Mindless, he says, and arrogant

Minutes taken up by the grey puffs from their mouths

Mistake of the world is to think happiness possible to the sense

Mistaking of her desires for her reasons

Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity

Money is of course a rough test of virtue

Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses

Moral indignation is ever consolatory

Morales, madame, suit ze sun

More argument I cannot bear

More culpable the sparer than the spared

Most youths are like Pope's women; they have no character

Mrs. Fleming, of Queen Anne's Farm, was the wife of a yeoman

Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers

Music in Italy? Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous

Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike

Mutual deference

My engagement to Mr. Pericles is that I am not to write

My mistress! My glorious stolen fruit! My dark angel of love

My plain story is of two Kentish damsels

My first girl--she's brought disgrace on this house

My belief is, you do it on purpose. Can't be such rank idiots

My voice! I have my voice! Emilia had cried it out to herself

Naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time

Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example

Nation's half made-up of the idle and the servants of the idle

Nations at war are wild beasts

Naturally as deceived as he wished to be

Nature and Law never agreed

Nature is not of necessity always roaring

Nature could at a push be eloquent to defend the guilty

Nature's logic, Nature's voice, for self-defence

Naughtily Australian and kangarooly

Necessary for him to denounce somebody

Necessity's offspring

Needed support of facts, and feared them

Never reckon on womankind for a wise act

Never, never love a married woman

Never intended that we should play with flesh and blood

Never forget that old Ireland is weeping

Never forgave an injury without a return blow for it

Never to despise the good opinion of the nonentities

Never nurse an injury, great or small

Never was a word fitter for a quack's mouth than "humanity"

Never fell far short of outstripping the sturdy pedestrian Time

Never pretend to know a girl by her face

Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity

Next door to the Last Trump

Night has little mercy for the self-reproachful

No nose to the hero, no moral to the tale

No runner can outstrip his fate

No companionship save with the wound they nurse

No Act to compel a man to deny what appears in the papers

No great harm done when you're silent

No heart to dare is no heart to love!

No stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it

No word is more lightly spoken than shame

No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters

No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it

No enemy's shot is equal to a weak heart in the act

No man can hear the words which prove him a prophet (quietly)

No conversation coming of it, her curiosity was violent

No intoxication of hot blood to cheer those who sat at home

No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is

No love can be without jealousy

No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the blackguards

None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists

Nor can a protest against coarseness be sweepingly interpreted

Not every chapter can be sunshine

Not afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win

Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes

Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent

Not daring risk of office by offending the taxpayer

Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love

Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer

Not always the right thing to do the right thing

Not to do things wholly is worse than not to do things at all

Not to be feared more than are the general race of bunglers

Not much esteem for non-professional actresses

Not in a situation that could bear of her blaming herself

Not so much read a print as read the imprinting on themselves

Not to go hunting and fawning for alliances

Not to bother your wits, but leave the puzzle to the priest

Not to be the idol, to have an aim of our own

Not the great creatures we assume ourselves to be

Not likely to be far behind curates in besieging an heiress

Nothing is a secret that has been spoken

Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted

Nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by

Notoriously been above the honours of grammar

Nought credit but what outward orbs reveal

Now far from him under the failure of an effort to come near

Nursing of a military invalid awakens tenderer anxieties

O for yesterday!

O self! self! self!

O heaven! of what avail is human effort?

Obedience oils necessity

Obeseness is the most sensitive of our ailments

Objects elevated even by a decayed world have their magnetism

Observation is the most, enduring of the pleasures of life

Occasional instalments--just to freshen the account

Official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one

Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea

Oh! beastly bathos

Oh! I can't bear that class of people

Old houses are doomed to burnings

Old age is a prison wall between us and young people

Omnipotence, which is in the image of themselves

On a morning when day and night were made one by fog

On the threshold of Puberty, there is one Unselfish Hour

On which does the eye linger longest-- which draws the heart?

On a wild April morning

Once my love? said he. Not now?--does it mean, not now?

Once out of the rutted line, you are food for lion and jackal

Once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty

One wants a little animation in a husband

One who studies is not being a fool

One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light

One might build up a respectable figure in negatives

One in a temper at a time I'm sure 's enough

One night, and her character's gone

One learns to have compassion for fools, by studying them

One has to feel strong in a delicate position

One of those men whose characters are read off at a glance

One seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us

One idea is a bullet

One fool makes many, and so, no doubt, does one goose

Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers

Only true race, properly so called, out of India--German

Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder

Openly treated; all had an air of being on the surface

Optional marriages, broken or renewed every seven years

Or where you will, so that's in Ireland

Oratory will not work against the stream, or on languid tides

Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt

Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher

Our weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us

Our partner is our master

Our comedies are frequently youth's tragedies

Our life is but a little holding, lent To do a mighty labour

Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to run

Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians

Our love and labour are constantly on trial

Owner of such a woman, and to lose her!

Pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency

Pain is a cloak that wraps you about

Paint themselves pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots

Parliament, is the best of occupations for idle men

Partake of a morning draught

Passion, he says, is noble strength on fire

Passion is not invariably love

Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess

Passion does not inspire dark appetite-- Dainty innocence does

Past, future, and present, the three weights upon humanity

Past fairness, vaguely like a snow landscape in the thaw

Patience is the pestilence

Patronizing woman

Paying compliments and spoiling a game!

Payment is no more so than to restore money held in trust

Peace-party which opposed was the actual cause of the war

Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife

Pebble may roll where it likes--not so the costly jewel

Peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose

People of a provocative prosperity

People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners

People with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship

People who can lose themselves in a ray of fancy at any season

People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query

Perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe

Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant

Persist, if thou wouldst truly reach thine ends

Person in another world beyond this world of blood

Perused it, and did not recognize herself in her language

Pessimy is invulnerable

Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied

Philip was a Spartan for keeping his feelings under

Philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded

Pitiful conceit in men

Planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost

Play the great game of blunders

Play second fiddle without looking foolish

Pleasant companion, who did not play the woman obtrusively among men

Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled

Pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty

Pleasure sat like an inextinguishable light on her face

Poetic romance is delusion

Policy seems to petrify their minds

Polished barbarism

Politics as well as the other diseases

Poor mortals are not in the habit of climbing Olympus to ask

Portrait of himself by the artist