Ethel Churchill (or The Two Brides)

"That is love Which chooseth from a thousand only one To be the object of that tenderness Natural to every heart; which can resign Its own best happiness for one dear sake; Can bear with absence ; hath no part in hope, For hope is somewhat selfish : love is not, And doth prefer another to itself."

"… if there be one torture which the demons, who delight in human misery, might, rejoice to inflict, it is the anxious suspense of love acting upon an imaginative temperament. It is extraordinary the power of creation with which the mind seems suddenly endowed, and only to suppose the worst. Death, sickness, crime, misfortune,—these are the images which start upon the solitude made fearful with their presence."

"'Tis a strange mystery, the power of words ! Life is in them, and death. A word can send The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek, Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn The current cold and deadly to the heart. Anger and fear are in them ; grief and joy Are on their sound ; yet slight, impalpable:— A word is but a breath of passing air."

"If ever we forgive another's celebrity, it is when it fulfils our own prophecy."

"Ah ! sad it is to see the deck Dismasted of some noble wreck ; And sad to see the marble stone Defaced, and with gray moss o'ergrown; And sad to see the broken lute For ever to its music mute. But what is lute, or fallen tower, Or ship sunk in its proudest hour, To awe and majesty combined In their worst shape — the ruined mind ?"

"Life is made up of vanities — so small, So mean, the common history of the day, — That mockery seems the sole philosophy. Then some stern truth starts up — cold, sudden, strange; And we are taught what life is by despair : — The toys, the trifles, and the petty cares, Melt into nothingness — we know their worth ; The heart avenges every careless thought, And makes us feel that fate is terrible."

"But there always is in my mind something at once ludicrous and mournful in a crowd congregated for the purpose of amusement. What discontent, what vanity, move the complicated wheels of the social machine! There are many pleasures that one can comprehend, and even go the length of admitting, that they are worth some trouble in endeavouring to obtain; but the mania of filling your house with guests of whom you know little, and for whom you care nothing, is only less incomprehensible than why they should be at the trouble of coming to you."

"Where is the heart that has not bowed A slave, eternal Love, to thee? Look on the cold, the gay, the proud, And is there one among them free !"

"There is something fearfully wrong in what we call our highly civilized state of society, when poverty can be permitted to take the ghastly shapes of suffering that it does. It is enough, if we did but think, to make the heart sick, when we know the misery, the abject misery, which surrounds us in this vast city ; and we might tremble to consider how much might be prevented—prevented both by individual and by general exertion."

"[From Ethel Churchill]: Good heavens ! what a precious thing love is ! what a gift of all hope, all happiness, into the power of another !—and yet, how often is it bestowed in vain ! wasted, utterly and cruelly wasted !"

"There is an awe about death, even in the face the most familiar to us; it has already taken its likeness from the hereafter, so dreadful and so dark."

"It is an awful thing how we forget The sacred ties that bind us each to each. Our pleasures might admonish us, and say, Tremble at that delight which is unshared; Its selfishness must be its punishment. All have their sorrows, and how strange it seems They do not soften more the general heart : Sorrows should be those universal links That draw all life together."

"[From Lavinia Fenton]: I lay it down as a rule, the truth of which all experience confirms, that every man behaves as ill as he possibly can to every woman, under every possible circumstance ! … What man has the slightest scruple as to gaining the confidence ; making himself not only necessary to her happiness, but that very happiness itself; and then sacrificing her to vanity, caprice, or any slight motive, that would not be held valid for one moment in any other matter !"

"It is a weary and a bitter hour When first the real disturbs the poet's world, And he distrusts the future. Not for that Should cold despondency weigh down the soul It is a glorious gift, bright poetry, And should be thankfully and nobly used. Let it look up to heaven !"

"[From Lady Marchmont’s journal]: Will the time ever come, when men will feel that the mind and the heart must work in concert, and that we must look around and afar for our happiness ; that our great mistake has been, the narrow circle to which we are content to limit good ?"

"Who ever said one-half of all that seemed in absence so easy to say ?"

"There are times when the poet marvels how he ever wrote, and feels as if he never could write again."

"It is a fearful trust, the trust of love. In fear, not hope, should woman's heart receive A guest so terrible."

"God, in thy mercy, keep us with thy hand ! Dark are the thoughts that strive within the heart, When evil passions rise like sudden storms, Fearful and fierce ! Let us not act those thoughts ; Leave not our course to our unguided will. Left to ourselves, all crime is possible, And those who seemed the most removed from guilt, Have sunk the deepest !"

"I believe there is not a woman in the world that would hesitate to part with the most costly toy in her possession, to save but an annoyance from the object she loved …"

"[Chapter title]:{of death} The Usual Destiny of the Imagination"

"nd this is the dearest privilege of the poet—to soothe the sorrowing, and to excite the languid hour ; to renovate exhausted nature, by awakening it with the spiritual and the elevated ; and bringing around our common hours shadows from those more divine."

"How many beautiful creations, how many glorious dreams went with him to the tomb ! but the unfulfilled destiny of genius is a mystery whose solution is not of earth. It is but one of those many voices wandering in this wilderness of ours that tell us, not here is our lot appointed to finish. We are here but for a space and a season ; for a task and a trial, and of the end no man knoweth. The earthly immortality of the mind is but a type of the heavenly immortality of the soul."

"It is a mood whose "profitless dejection” there are few among us but what have known. It is the result of the overstrained nerves, the worn-out frame—something of bodily weakness must mingle with it. We turn away from the future, we are too desponding to look forward. Every sorrow of the past seems to rise up, not only as a recollection of suffering, but as if each were an omen of what is to come. We feel as if even to wish were a folly ; or, worse, a tempting of fate. We have no confidence in our own good fortune; it seems as if the mere fact of wishing were enough to have that wish denied. A fretful discontent gnaws at the heart, the worse for being ashamed to confess it."

"It is a most difficult art to give; for if, in giving, we also give the habit of dependence, our gift has been that of an evil spirit, which always proves fatal. What we should seek to give are, habits, not only of industry, but of prudence: to look forward, is the first great lesson of human improvement. In the assistance hitherto offered to those in need, the self-respect of the obliged has been too much forgotten : we have degraded, where we should have encouraged. The remedy lies with time, and with knowledge ; but there must be much to redress in the social system, which has luxury at one extreme, and starvation at the other."

"Charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfilment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent."

"I can understand the feeling of the duellist when really fierce and bitter—there are injuries only to be washed out in blood ; but I have always thought, that the seconds must, or ought, to feel very uncomfortable. They stand by in cold blood to watch the glittering steel, whose shimmer may every moment be quenched in blood. If the eye be dropped for an instant, the next it may look on death, and death in its most fearful shape—one human being dying by the rage, the evil passion, or the unforgivable fault of another."

"The moonlight falleth lovely over earth ; And strange, indeed, must be the mind of man That can resist its beautiful reproach. How can hate work like fever in the soul With such entire tranquillity around? Evil must be our nature to refuse Such gentle intercession."

"[From Lavinia Fenton]: The lover and the physician are each popular from the same cause—we talk to them of nothing but ourselves; I dare say that was the origin of confession—egotism, under the fine name of religion."

"Few know the demands made by the imagination on those who are once its masters and its victims. Its exercise is so feverish, and so exciting ; the cheek burns, the pulse beats aloud, the whole frame trembles with eagerness during the progress of composition. For the time you are what you create. The exhaustion of this process is not felt till some other species of exertion makes its demand on the already overwrought frame, the overstrained nerves begin to discover that they have been wound to the utmost. There is no strength left to bear life's other emotions."

"To find that you have been deceived, where you trusted so entirely ; trifled with, where all your deepest and sweetest emotions had been called into life, is the most acute—the most enduring sorrow of which that life is capable."

"We might have been !—these are but common words, And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;"

"... I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is prejudice in its most picturesque shape ; but I hold that it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature."

"A great sorrow forgets every thing but itself; but little sorrows exaggerate themselves and each other."

"Is not the lark companion of the spring? And should not Hope — that sky-lark of the heart— Bear, with her sunny song, youth company ?"

"Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, Men would behold its threshold, and despair."

"[PS to a Lady Marchmont letter]: Lord Marchmont, whenever he sees me writing, sends you a message of equal length and civility. Once named, it will do for always. You can keep it by you like a stock of frozen provision."

"But there is something in parting that softens the heart;—it is as if we had never felt how unutterably dear a beloved object could be, till we are about to lose it for ever."

"[From Sir Jasper]: I like a cat because it does not disguise its selfishness with any flattering hypocrisies. Its attachment is not to yourself, but to your house. Let it but have food, and a warm lair among the embers, and it heeds not at whose expense. Then it has the spirit to resent aggression. You shall beat your dog, and he will fawn upon you; but a cat never forgives : it has no tender mercies, and it torments before it destroys its prey."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague within Lady Marchmont’s letters]: All men are rascals to women, and all women rascals to each other."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague within Lady Marchmont’s letters]: Friendship is just an innocent delusion, to round a period in a moral essay."

"[From Henrietta]: A man in love is a nonentity for the time—he is nothing ; and nature, that is, my nature, abhors a vacuum."

"The first step towards establishing pretensions of any kind, is to believe firmly in them yourself: faith is very catching, and half the beauty-reputations of which I hear have originated with the possessors."

"What mockeries are our most firm resolves ! To will is ours, but not to execute. We map our future like some unknown coast, And say, " Here is an harbour, here a rock — The one we will attain, the other shun :" And we do neither."

"It (London) is the most real place in the world ; you will inevitably be brought to your level."

"O ! never another dream can be Like that early dream of ours, When the fairy, Hope, lay down like a child, And slept amid opening flowers."

"Who shall place a bound to human folly, when both the inflicter and the endurer of torture have deemed that pain is acceptable in the sight of God ?"

"There is nothing to which you so soon become accustomed as to the presence of the beloved one ; the gentle chain of habit easily becomes a sweet necessity."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: If a young man has his way to make in the world, a wife is a dead weight upon his hands. Indeed, I have looked upon the fable of Sisyphus as an allegory, and that his wife was the stone which so perpetually rolled back upon his hands, effectually retarding his weary progress up-hill."

"[From Sir Jasper Meredith]: Human enjoyment is all too dearly atoned."