My Victorian Year #48

I am currently reading RUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell and CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? by Anthony Trollope. I am enjoying both of these books very much. Both are rereads.

Quotes from Can You Forgive Her?

• Yarmouth is not a happy place for a picnic. A picnic should be held among green things. Green turf is absolutely an essential.
• She had a wondrous power of smiling; and could, upon occasion, give signs of peculiar favour to half a dozen different gentlemen in as many minutes. 
• “You can’t suppose that any girl will like to be drenched with sea-water when she has taken so much trouble with her starch,” said Kate.  “Then she shouldn’t come fishing,” said Mr Cheesacre. “I hate such airs.” 
• When ladies have made up their minds to dance they will dance let the circumstances of the moment be ever so antagonistic to that exercise.
• A woman’s life is important to her, — as is that of a man to him, — not chiefly in regard to that which she shall do with it. The chief thing for her to look to is the manner in which that something shall be done. It is of moment to a young man when entering life to decide whether he shall make hats or shoes; but not of half the moment that will be that other decision, whether he shall make good shoes or bad. 
• Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a vice. 

 Quotes from Ruth

• As she ran, she prayed with wild eagerness; she prayed that she might see his face once more, even if she died on the spot before him.
• It was one of those prayers which God is too merciful to grant; but despairing and wild as it was, Ruth put her soul into it, and prayed it again, and yet again.
• "In the eye of God, she is exactly the same as if the life she has led had left no trace behind. We knew her errors before, Faith." 
• "Yes, but not this disgrace—this badge of her shame!" "Faith, Faith! let me beg of you not to speak so of the little innocent babe, who may be God's messenger to lead her back to Him.
• Teach her (and God will teach her, if man does not come between) to reverence her child; and this reverence will shut out sin,—will be purification."
• You yourself have not greater sorrow over this young creature's sin than I have: the difference is this, you confuse the consequences with the sin."
• We are both right: I, in the way in which the child ought to be viewed; you, dear good Faith, for thinking of taking her home with us. God bless you, dear, for it!"
• It is better not to expect or calculate consequences. The longer I live, the more fully I see that. Let us try simply to do right actions, without thinking of the feelings they are to call out in others.
• My dear Ruth, you don't know how often I sin; I do so wrong, with my few temptations. We are both of us great sinners in the eyes of the Most Holy; let us pray for each other.
• I cannot abide the way some folk has of denying there's trouble or pain to be met; just as if their saying there was none, would do away with it. Some folk treats one like a babby, and I don't like it. I'm not meaning you, Master Thurstan
• "But Sally is not 'people.'" "Oh, I see it must be done; she'll talk as much as all the other persons put together, so that's the reason I call her 'people.' Shall I call her?"
• There's a right and a wrong way of setting about everything—and to my thinking, the right way is to take a thing up heartily, if it is only making a bed.
• 'Sally, do you think God has put us into the world just to be selfish, and do nothing but see after our own souls? or to help one another with heart and hand, as Christ did to all who wanted help?' ...because everything may be done in a right way or a wrong; the right way is to do it as well as we can, as in God's sight; the wrong is to do it in a self-seeking spirit, which either leads us to neglect it to follow out some device of our own for our own ends, or to give up too much time and thought to it both before and after the doing.'
• Just try for a day to think of all the odd jobs as has to be done well and truly as in God's sight, not just slurred over anyhow, and you'll go through them twice as cheerfully. 
• Those summer mornings were happy, for she was learning neither to look backwards nor forwards, but to live faithfully and earnestly in the present.

       

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