Basil quotes

I might attempt, in this place, to sketch my own character as it was at that time. But what man can say—I will sound the depth of my own vices, and measure the height of my own virtues; and be as good as his word?

We can neither know nor judge ourselves; others may judge, but cannot know us: God alone judges and knows too.

Let my character appear—as far as any human character can appear in its integrity, in this world—in my actions, when I describe the one eventful passage in my life which forms the basis of this narrative.

When a family is possessed of large landed property, the individual of that family who shows least interest in its welfare; who is least fond of home, least connected by his own sympathies with his relatives, least ready to learn his duties or admit his responsibilities, is often that very individual who is to succeed to the family inheritance⁠—the eldest son.

My brother Ralph was no exception to this remark. We were educated together. After our education was completed, I never saw him, except for short periods. He was almost always on the continent, for some years after he left college.

very few women would regard her with that slightingly attentive stare, that steady depreciating scrutiny, which a dashing decided beauty so often receives (and so often triumphs in receiving) from her personal inferiors among her own sex.

The greatest charms that my sister has on the surface, come from beneath it.

When you really knew her, when she spoke to you freely, as to a friend—then, the attraction of her voice, her smile, her manner, impressed you indescribably. Her slightest words and her commonest actions interested and delighted you, you knew not why.

You missed and thought of her, when you were fresh from the society of the most beautiful and the most brilliant women.

You remembered a few kind, pleasant words of hers when you forgot the wit of the wittiest ladies, the learning of the most learned.

The influence thus possessed, and unconsciously possessed, by my sister over everyone with whom she came in contact—over men especially—may, I think be very simply accounted for, in very few sentences.

My father, following the bent of his peculiar and favourite ideas, always thought it was the look of her race in her eyes, the ascendancy of her race in her manners. I believe it to have proceeded from a simpler and a better cause.

There is a goodness of heart, which carries the shield of its purity over the open hand of its kindness: and that goodness was hers.

To my father, she was more, I believe, than he himself ever imagined—or will ever know, unless he should lose her.

At such times, her eyes only grew dimmer and less animated than usual; the paleness of her complexion became rather more marked; her lips closed and trembled involuntarily—but this was all: there was no sighing, no weeping, no speaking even. And yet she suffered acutely.

The very strength of her emotions was in their silence and their secrecy.

I, of all others—I, guilty of infecting with my anguish the pure heart that loved me—ought to know this best!

I had often before ridden in omnibuses to amuse myself by observing the passengers.

An omnibus has always appeared to me, to be a perambulatory exhibition-room of the eccentricities of human nature.

I know not any other sphere in which persons of all classes and all temperaments are so oddly collected together, and so immediately contrasted and confronted with each other.

How often we prophesy truly to ourselves the approach of a friend or enemy, just before either have really appeared!

How strangely and abruptly we become convinced, at a first introduction, that we shall secretly love this person and loathe that, before experience has guided us with a single fact in relation to their characters!

I have said that the two additional passengers who entered the vehicle in which I was riding, were, one of them, an elderly lady; the other, a young girl.

there were the little millinery and jewellery ornaments that she wore—simple and commonplace enough in themselves—yet each a beauty, each a treasure, on her. There was all this to behold, all this to dwell on, in spite of the veil.

The veil! how little of the woman does it hide, when the man really loves her!

We had nearly arrived at the last point to which the omnibus would take us, when she and her companion got out. I followed them, cautiously and at some distance.

The more I tried to collect myself, to resume the easy, equable feelings with which I had set forth in the morning, the less self-possessed I became.

There are two emergencies in which the wisest man may try to reason himself back from impulse to principle; and try in vain:⁠—the one when a woman has attracted him for the first time; the other, when, for the first time, also, she has happened to offend him.

I know not how long I had been walking in the park, thus absorbed yet not thinking, when the clock of a neighbouring church struck three, and roused me to the remembrance that I had engaged to ride out with my sister at two o’clock.

At dinner, I tried hard to rival him in jest and joviality; I drank much more than my usual quantity of wine—but it was useless.

The gay words came fainting from my heart, and fell dead on my lips.

The wine fevered, but did not exhilarate me. Still, the image of the dark beauty of the morning was the one reigning image of my thoughts—still, the influence of the morning, at once sinister and seductive, kept its hold on my heart.

At dinner, I tried hard to rival him in jest and joviality; I drank much more than my usual quantity of wine—but it was useless. The gay words came fainting from my heart, and fell dead on my lips.

The wine fevered, but did not exhilarate me.

Still, the image of the dark beauty of the morning was the one reigning image of my thoughts—still, the influence of the morning, at once sinister and seductive, kept its hold on my heart.

The love-thoughts of Margaret alone remained, and now remained unquestioned and unopposed. Were my convictions of a few hours since, like the night-mists that fade before returning sunshine? I knew not.

But I was young; and each new morning is as much the new life of youth, as the new life of Nature.

So I left my study and went out. Consequences might come how they would, and when they would; I thought of them no more. It seemed as if I had cast off every melancholy thought, in leaving my room;

London was rousing everywhere into morning activity, as I passed through the streets.

The shutters were being removed from the windows of public-houses: the drink-vampires that suck the life of London, were opening their eyes betimes to look abroad for the new day’s prey!

Small tobacco and provision-shops in poor neighbourhoods; dirty little eating-houses, exhaling greasy-smelling steam, and displaying a leaf of yesterday’s paper, stained and flyblown, hanging in the windows—were already plying, or making ready to ply, their daily trade.

Never before had I committed the meanness of trusting to my social advantages, what I feared to trust to myself.

It is true that love soars higher than the other passions; but it can stoop lower as well.

Her answers to all that I urged were confused, commonplace, and chilling enough.

Now, when I had given myself up to the service of love, how rapidly the pen ran over the paper; how much more freely and smoothly the desires of the heart flowed into words, than the thoughts of the mind!

Composition was an instinct now, an art no longer.

I could write eloquently, and yet write without pausing for an expression or blotting a word—It was the slow progress up the hill, in the service of ambition; it was the swift (too swift) career down it, in the service of love!

Poor Mrs. Sherwin! I had hardly noticed her on the day when she got into the omnibus with her daughter—it was as if I now saw her for the first time.

There is a natural communicativeness about women’s emotions. A happy woman imperceptibly diffuses her happiness around her; she has an influence that is something akin to the influence of a sunshiny day.

So, again, the melancholy of a melancholy woman is invariably, though silently, infectious; and Mrs. Sherwin was one of this latter order. Her pale, sickly, moist-looking skin; her large, mild, watery, light-blue eyes; the restless timidity of her expression;

Evening after evening passed away—one more happily than another—in what Margaret and I called our lessons.

Never were lessons of literature so like lessons of love.

We read oftenest the lighter Italian poets—we studied the poetry of love, written in the language of love.

Such was his countenance in point of form; but in that which is the outward assertion of our immortality—in expression—it was, as I now beheld it, an utter void. Never had I before seen any human face which baffled all inquiry like his.

No mask could have been made expressionless enough to resemble it; and yet it looked like a mask.

It told you nothing of his thoughts, when he spoke: nothing of his disposition, when he was silent. His cold grey eyes gave you no help in trying to study him.

he spoke just as seldom, and resisted just as resolutely and respectfully the many attempts made on my part to lead him into conversation and familiarity. If he had really been trying to excite my interest, he could not have succeeded more effectually.

I felt towards him much as a man feels in a labyrinth, when every fresh failure in gaining the centre, only produces fresh obstinacy in renewing the effort to arrive at it.

From Margaret I gained no sympathy for my newly-aroused curiosity. She appeared, much to my surprise, to care little about Mr. Mannion; and always changed the conversation, if it related to him, whenever it depended upon her to continue the topic or not.

While Mr. Mannion went out to give some directions, as he said, to his servant, I had an opportunity of examining the apartment more in detail.

To study the appearance of a man’s dwelling-room, is very often nearly equivalent to studying his own character.

The personal contrast between Mr. Sherwin and his clerk was remarkable enough, but the contrast between the dimensions and furnishing of the rooms they lived in, was to the full as extraordinary.

I have neither wife nor child; and no near relations to think of—I have nothing but my routine of business in the day, and my books here by my lonely fireside, at night.

Our life is not much; but it was made for a little more than this.

My former pupil at North Villa is my pupil no longer. I can’t help feeling that it would be an object in existence for me to occupy myself with her happiness and yours;

Such an appeal as this was not to be resisted: I answered him at once and unreservedly.

What right had I to draw bad inferences from a man’s face, voice, and manner, merely because they impressed me, as out of the common?

Did I know how much share the influence of natural infirmity, or the outward traces of unknown sorrow and suffering, might have had in producing the external peculiarities which had struck me?

If I had been her husband in fact, as well as in name; if I had been her father, her brother, or her friend, I should have let her first emotions have their way, and then have expostulated with her afterwards.

But I was her lover still; and, to my eyes, Margaret’s tears made virtues even of Margaret’s faults.

Such occurrences as these, happening but at rare intervals, formed the only interruptions to the generally even and happy tenor of our intercourse. Weeks and weeks glided away, and not a hasty or a hard word passed between us.

Excuses lead to prevarications, and prevarications to—what I will not insult you by imagining possible in your case. You are of age, and must know your own responsibilities and mine.

Choose at once, between saying nothing, and saying all.

”

It was as if my life had run into a new channel since my last autumn and winter at the Hall, and now refused to flow back at my bidding into its old course.

Home seemed home no longer, except in name.

As soon as the week was over, my father and I parted exactly as we had met. When I took leave of Clara, she refrained from making any allusion to the shortness of my stay;

I felt little impatience, and no sense of fatigue; for in less than two hours more I knew that I should see my wife again.

Until then, the present had no existence for me⁠—I lived in the past and future.

I wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of London.

I wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of London.

All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved through my bridal dream.

Where was my world, at that moment? Narrowed to the cottage in the country which was to receive us on the morrow. Where were the beings in the world? All merged in one—Margaret.

In the moment of their restoration, the blind have had one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering gleam of brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot extinguish.

The new darkness is not like the void darkness of old; it is filled with changing visions of brilliant colours and ever-varying forms, rising, falling, whirling hither and thither with every second.

Even when the handkerchief is passed over them, the once sightless eyes, though bandaged fast, are yet not blinded as they were before.

After this, came a quick, restless, unintermittent toiling of obscure thought, ever in the same darkened sphere, ever on the same impenetrable subject, ever failing to reach some distant and visionary result.

It was as if something were imprisoned in my mind, and moving always to and fro in it⁠—moving, but never getting free.

Soon, these thoughts began to take a form that I could recognise.

and still, I had no courage to speak, no resolution to endure.

The great misery of the past, shut out from me the present and the future alike⁠—every active power of my mind seemed to be destroyed hopelessly and forever.

There were moments—most often at the early morning hours, while the heaviness of the night’s sleep still hung over me in my wakefulness—when I could hardly realise the calamity which had overwhelmed me;

… called on to speak—I mechanically looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see the sentence to be pronounced against me, already written on the walls, or grimly foreshadowed in the faces of the old family portraits which hung above the fireplace.

What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them?

In moments of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the past, in spite of the present—in moments of bitter affliction, it can still recur to everyday trifles, in spite of ourselves.

What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them?

In moments of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the past, in spite of the present⁠—in moments of bitter affliction, it can still recur to everyday trifles, in spite of ourselves.

While I now sat silent in my father’s room, long-forgotten associations of childhood connected with different parts of it, began to rise on my memory in the strangest and most startling independence of any influence or control, which my present agitation and suspense might be …

“All, and more than all, which that degrading engagement could imply, I will do. But I have not fallen so low yet, as to be bribed to perform a duty.

You may be able to forget that you are my father; I can never forget that I am your son.

”

We are seldom able to discover under any ordinary conditions of self-knowledge, how intimately that spiritual part of us, which is undying, can attach to itself and its operations the poorest objects of that external world around us, which is perishable.

In the ravelled skein, the slightest threads are the hardest to follow.

In analysing the associations and sympathies which regulate the play of our passions, the simplest and homeliest are the last that we detect.

My next proceeding was to go upstairs, and see Clara. Upstairs, I give you my word of honour, it was worse still. Clara was walking about the room with your letter in her hand—just reach me the matches: my cigar’s out.

Some men can talk and smoke in equal proportions⁠—I never could.

“You know as well as I do,” he continued when he had relit his cigar, “that Clara is not usually demonstrative.

Again I looked on the patiently-laboured pages, familiar relics of that earliest and best ambition which I had abandoned for love; too faithful records of the tranquil, ennobling pleasures which I had lost forever!

Oh, for one Thought-Flower now, from the dream-garden of the happy past!

“I took more care of those leaves of writing, after you had thrown them aside, than of anything else I had,” said Clara.

‘Sir,’ I said very politely, ‘if you mean to make a cursing and a swearing conference of this, I think it only fair to inform you beforehand that you are likely to get the worst of it.

When the whole collection of British oaths is exhausted, I can swear fluently in five foreign languages: I have always made it a principle to pay back abuse at compound interest, and I don’t exaggerate in saying, that I am quite capable of swearing you out of your senses, if you persist in setting me the example.

And now, if you like to go on, pray do—I’m ready to hear you.’ While I was speaking, he stared at me in a state of helpless astonishment;

hear the end of it. Of course I knew that we couldn’t carry out this divorce-threat, without its being the death of my father; but I thought a little quiet bullying on my part might do Mr. Shopkeeper Sherwin some good. And I was right.

You never saw a man sit sorer on the sharp edges of a dilemma than he did.

I stuck to my point in spite of everything; silence and money, or exposure and divorce—just which he pleased. ‘I deny every one of your infamous imputations,’ said he. ‘That’s not the question,’ said I. ‘I’ll go to your father,’ said he.

yet I had as little of the desire as of the power to prepare for it. A superstitious conviction that my actions were governed by a fatality which no human foresight could alter or avoid, began to strengthen within me.

From this time forth, I awaited events with the uninquiring patience, the helpless resignation of despair.

My brother came, punctual to his appointment. When he proposed that I should at once accompany him to the hospital, I never hesitated at doing as he desired. We reached our destination; and Ralph approached the gates to make his first enquiries.

They waited, day after day, when I was first installed in the cottage, to see letters sent to me—and no letters arrived: to see my friends join me—and no friends came. This deepened the mystery to their eyes.

They began to recall to memory old Cornish legends of solitary, secret people who had lived, years and years ago, in certain parts of the county⁠—coming, none knew whence; existing, none knew by what means; dying and disappearing, none knew when.

They felt half inclined to identify me with these mysterious visitors—to consider me as some being, a stranger to the whole human family, who had come to waste away under a curse, and die ominously and secretly among them.

… taken, as the assumed name under which I live, and shall continue to live until my father has given me back his confidence and his affection, the name of a little estate that once belonged to my mother, and that now belongs to her daughter.

Even the most wretched have their caprice, their last favourite fancy.

I possess no memorial of Clara, not even a letter.

now rolling in shapes like vast smoke-wreaths before the light wind which still blew at intervals. At a distance of more than a few yards, the largest objects were totally invisible.

I had nothing to guide me, as I advanced, but the ceaseless roaring of the sea on my right hand.

It was my purpose to get to Penzance by night. Beyond that, I had no project, no thought of what refuge I should seek next. Any hope I might have formerly felt of escaping from Mannion, had now deserted me forever.

“

Take care of your life. It is not yours to throw away⁠—it is mine!

”

I am no longer the sick refuse of the hospital. Where you go, I have the limbs and the endurance to go too! I tell you again, we are linked together for life; I cannot leave you if I would.

The horrible joy of hunting you through the world, leaps in my blood like fire!

Look! look out on those tossing waves. There is no rest for them; there shall be no rest for you!”

the obscurity of the mist, and the strange, wild shapes it began to take, as it now rolled almost over our heads—all that I saw, all that I heard, seemed suddenly to madden me, as Mannion uttered his last words.

My brain felt turned to fire; my heart to ice.

A horrible temptation to rid myself forever of the wretch before me, by hurling him over the precipice at my feet, seized on me.