Rachel Ray quotes

There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees;⁠—for whom the support and warmth of some wall, some paling, some post, is absolutely necessary;

—who, in their growth, will bend and incline themselves towards some such prop for their life, creeping with their tendrils along the ground till they reach it when the circumstances of life have brought no such prop within their natural and immediate reach.

but to the women of whom I now speak some kind of marriage is quite indispensable, and by them some kind of marriage is always made, though the union is often unnatural.

A woman in want of a wall against which to nail herself will swear conjugal obedience sometimes to her cook, sometimes to her grandchild, sometimes to her lawyer.

Any standing corner, post, or stump, strong enough to bear her weight will suffice; but to some standing corner, post, or stump, she will find her way and attach herself, and there will she be married.

A woman in want of a wall against which to nail herself will swear conjugal obedience sometimes to her cook, sometimes to her grandchild, sometimes to her lawyer.

Any standing corner, post, or stump, strong enough to bear her weight will suffice; but to some standing corner, post, or stump, she will find her way and attach herself, and there will she be married.

Such a woman was our Mrs. Ray. As her name imports, she had been married in the way most popular among ladies, with bell, book, and parson.

… young woman—that he was taking the only step by which he could hope to find a wife for himself—she was instantly shocked at the wickedness of the world, and prayed inwardly that the girl at least might be saved like a brand from the burning.

A young man, in her estimation, was a wicked wild beast, seeking after young women to devour them, as a cat seeks after mice.

This at least was her established idea—the idea on which she worked, unless some other idea on any special occasion were put into her head.

In all such matters, according to Dorothea’s view of the case, Rachel should do as she was bidden. But then how was Rachel to be made to do as she was bidden? How was her sister to enforce her attendance?

Obedience in this world depends as frequently on the weakness of him who is governed as on the strength of him who governs.

That man who was going to the left is ordered by you with some voice of command to go to the right. When he hesitates you put more command into your voice, more command into your eyes—and then he obeys. Mrs.

The farmers knew nothing of it. The labourers drenched themselves habitually with cider. Nevertheless the brewery of Messrs. Bungall and Tappitt was kept going, and the large ugly square brick house in which the Tappitt family lived was warm and comfortable.

There is something in the very name of beer that makes money.

Old Bungall, he who first established the house, was still remembered by the seniors of Baslehurst, but he had been dead more than twenty years before the period of my story.

Prime. Nice things aggravated her spirits and made her fretful. She liked the tea to be stringy and bitter, and she liked the bread to be stale;—as she preferred also that her weeds should be battered and old.

She was approaching that stage of discipline at which ashes become pleasant eating, and sackcloth is grateful to the skin.

The self-indulgences of the saints in this respect often exceed anything that is done by the sinners.

She was approaching that stage of discipline at which ashes become pleasant eating, and sackcloth is grateful to the skin.

The self-indulgences of the saints in this respect often exceed anything that is done by the sinners.

“Dorothea,” said Mrs. Ray, and she looked down upon the dark dingy fluid in her cup as she spoke, “I have been up to Mr. Comfort’s today.”

Nor do I speak of this deficiency in his clerical aptitudes as being injurious to him simply—or even chiefly—among folk who are themselves gentle; but that his efficiency for clerical purposes was marred altogether, among high and low, by his misfortune in this respect.

It is not the owner of a good coat that sees and admires its beauty.

It is not even they who have good coats themselves who recognize the article on the back of another. They who have not good coats themselves have the keenest eyes for the coats of their better-clad neighbours.

It is not even they who have good coats themselves who recognize the article on the back of another. They who have not good coats themselves have the keenest eyes for the coats of their better-clad neighbours.

As it is with coats, so it is with that which we call gentility. It is caught at a word, it is seen at a glance, it is appreciated unconsciously at a touch by those who have none of it themselves.

It is the greatest of all aids to the doctor, the lawyer, the member of Parliament—though in that position a man may perhaps prosper without it—and to the statesman; but to the clergyman it is a vital necessity. Now Mr. Prong was not a gentleman.

I have seen in Italy and in America women perhaps as beautiful as any that I have seen in England, but in neither country does it seem that such beauty is intended for domestic use.

In Italy the beauty is soft, and of the flesh. In America it is hard, and of the mind. Here it is of the heart, I think, and as such is the happiest of the three.

I do not say that Mrs. Butler Cornbury was a woman of very strong feeling; but her strongest feelings were home feelings. She was going to Mrs. Tappitt’s party because it might serve her husband’s purposes;

“Oh yes, very pretty. I had no idea it would be so nice.” To Mr. Tappitt in his blue waistcoat she could speak without hesitation.

Ah me! It is the young men who receive all the reverence that the world has to pay;⁠—all the reverence that is worth receiving. When a man is turned forty and has become fat, anybody can speak to him without awe!

“Yes, it is nice,” said Mr. Tappitt, who, however, was not quite easy in his mind. He had been into the supper room, and had found the waiter handling long-necked bottles, arranging them in rows, apparently by the dozen. “What’s that?” said he, sharply.

“Of course I cannot make you, but

I will scratch out nothing⁠—and forget nothing.

”

“Angry!—oh dear, no. Why should I be angry with you? I should be angry with that man, only I’m a person that never gets angry with anybody. You were quite right not to dance with him.

Never be made to dance with any man you don’t like; and remember that a young lady should always have her own way in a ballroom. She doesn’t get much of it anywhere else; does she, my dear?

And now I’ll go whenever you like it, but I’m not the least in a hurry. You’re the young lady, and you’re to have your own way.

“

Money is but dross. Who feels that more strongly than you do?

”

When Mr. Prong told her that money in her sight was dross, she merely shook her head. Why was it that she wrote those terribly caustic notes to the agent in Exeter if her quarterly payments were ever late by a single week?

“Defend me from a lone widow,” the agent used to say, “and especially if she’s evangelical.”

Mrs. Prime delighted in the sight of the bit of paper which conveyed to her the possession of her periodical wealth. To her money certainly was not dross, and I doubt if it was truly so regarded by Mr. Prong himself.

Why was it that she wrote those terribly caustic notes to the agent in Exeter if her quarterly payments were ever late by a single week? “Defend me from a lone widow,” the agent used to say, “and especially if she’s evangelical.”

Mrs. Prime delighted in the sight of the bit of paper which conveyed to her the possession of her periodical wealth.

To her money certainly was not dross, and I doubt if it was truly so regarded by Mr. Prong himself.

Prong agreed, and then Mrs. Prime got up and took her leave. How fearfully wicked would Rachel have been in her eyes, had Rachel made an appointment with a young man at some hour and some place in which she might be found alone!

But then it is so easy to trust oneself, and so easy also to distrust others.

“Good morning,” said Mrs. Prime; and as she went she gave her hand as a matter of course to her lover.

Tappitt, simpering. “I’m sure there was no trouble spared—nor yet expense.” She knew that she ought not to have uttered that last word, and she would have refrained if it had been possible to her;—but it was not possible.

The man who tells you how much his wine costs a dozen, knows that he is wrong while the words are in his mouth; but they are in his mouth, and he cannot restrain them.

Mr. Tappitt was not about to lecture Luke Rowan as to his conduct in regard to Rachel Ray. He found some difficulty in speaking to his would-be partner, even on matters of business, in a proper tone, and with becoming authority.

“If you don’t go out of my countinghouse, young man, I’ll see if I can’t put you out myself;” and Tappitt, in spite of his fifty-five years, absolutely put his hand down upon the poker.

There is no personal encounter in which a young man is so sure to come by the worst as in that with a much older man.

This is so surely the case that it ought to be considered cowardly in an old man to attack a young one.

Was she not a hypocrite? Did she not know that Mrs. Ray’s absence would be esteemed by him as a great gain, and not a loss? Why did she thus falsely talk of his waiting a long time?

Dogs fight with their teeth, and horses with their heels; swans with their wings, and cats with their claws;⁠—so also do women use such weapons as nature has provided for them.

“I came specially to see you,” said he; “not but what I should be very glad to see your mother, too, if she comes back before I am gone. But I don’t suppose she will, for you won’t let me stay so long as that.”

“But, dearest, say a word to me. You must say some word. Can you learn to love me, Rachel?”

Learn to love him! The lesson had come to her very easily.

How was it possible, she had once thought, not to love him.

So far love for her had run very smoothly. From her first meetings with him, on those evenings in which she had hardly spoken to him, his form had filled her eye, and his words had filled her mind.

She had learned to love to see him before she understood what her heart was doing for her.

Gradually, but very quickly, all her vacant thoughts had been given to him, and he had become the hero of her life. Now, almost before she had had time to question herself on the matter, he was her affianced husband.

Rachel went away across the room and looked out of the window upon the green. There she stood in silence for a few minutes while her mother was wiping her eyes and suppressing her sobs.

Tears also had run down Rachel’s cheeks; but they were silent tears, few in number and very salt.

“I cannot bring myself to wish that yet,” said she.

She had certainly fled from him. When she left the brewery-house, inducing Mrs. Cornbury to bring her away, she did so in order that she might escape from him.

But she ran from him as one runs from some great joy in order that the mind may revel over it in peace.

Then, little as she knew it, her love had been given. Her heart was his. She had placed him upon her pinnacle, and was prepared to worship him.

But, now in his old age, he was discontented and disgusted by the changes which had come upon him; and though some bodily strength for further service still remained to him, he had no longer any aptitude for useful work.

A man cannot change as men change. Individual men are like the separate links of a rotatory chain.

The chain goes on with continuous easy motion as though every part of it were capable of adapting itself to a curve, but not the less is each link as stiff and sturdy as any other piece of wrought iron. Dr.

He was not a drunkard, he lived becomingly with his wife, he had paid his way, and was a fellow-townsman. What was it to Dr. Harford, or even to Mr. Comfort, that he brewed bad beer? No man was compelled to drink it.

Why should not a man employ himself, openly and legitimately, in the brewing of bad beer, if the demand for bad beer were so great as to enable him to live by the occupation?

On the other hand, Luke Rowan was personally known to none of them; and they were jealous that a change should come among them with any view of teaching them a lesson or improving their condition. They believed, or thought they believed, that Mr.

But no resolution on Mrs. Ray’s part to keep the meeting secret would have been of avail, even had she made such resolution.

The fact would have fallen from her as easily as water falls from a sieve.

Rachel would have extracted from her the information, had she been ever so determined not to impart it. As things had turned out she had at once given Rachel to understand that she had met someone in Exeter whom she had not expected to meet.

He did rush into the thick of it, and boasted among his friends that the Jew was safe. I think he was right—right at any rate as regarded his own peace of mind.

Nothing gives a man such spirit for a fight, as the act of fighting.

During these election days he was almost regardless of Rowan. He was to second the nomination of the Jew, and so keen was he as to the speech that he would make, and as to the success of what he was doing against Mr.

The fact, for it is a fact, that some of the greatest orators whom the world has known have been found in this class, does not in any degree affect the truth of my proposition.

The best grapes in the world are perhaps grown in England, though England is not a land of grapes.

And for the same reason. The value of the thing depends upon its rarity, and its value instigates the efforts for excellence. The power of vocal expression which seems naturally to belong to an American is to an ordinary Englishman very marvellous;

To her it had appeared monstrous that such a one should have been even permitted to show himself in the town as a candidate for its representation. To such she would have denied all civil rights, and almost all social rights.

For a true spirit of persecution one should always go to a woman; and the milder, the sweeter, the more loving, the more womanly the woman, the stronger will be that spirit within her.

Strong love for the thing loved necessitates strong hatred for the thing hated, and thence comes the spirit of persecution.

But his thoughts of her were not as hers of him.

Nor is it often that a man’s love is like a woman’s⁠—restless, fearful, uncomfortable, sleepless, timid, and all-pervading.

Not the less may it be passionate, constant, and faithful. He had been angered by Rachel’s letter to him—greatly angered. Of a truth when Mrs. Ray met him in Exeter he had no message to send back to Cawston.

Tappitt would only take them for what they were worth, and would measure them by the standard which his old experience had taught him to adopt.

When a man has been long consuming red pepper, it takes much red pepper to stimulate his palate.

Had Mrs. Tappitt merely advised her husband, in proper conjugal phraseology, to relinquish his trade and to retire to Torquay, her advice, she knew, would have had no weight.

After that Mrs. Tappitt took his condition as an established fact, administered to him the comforts of her medicine-chest and teapot, excused his illness to the girls as having been produced by the fish, and never left his bedside till she had achieved her purpose.

If ever a man got tipsy to his own advantage, Mr. Tappitt did so on that occasion.

And if ever a man in that condition was treated with forbearing kindness by his wife, Mr. Tappitt was so treated then.

He knew well that the battle was gone from him—had in truth known it through all those half-comatose hours of his bedridden day.

But a man, or a nation, when yielding must still resist even in yielding.

Tappitt fumed and fussed under the clothes, protesting that his sending for Honyman would be useless. But the letter was written in his name and sent with his knowledge;

… in his business in order that she might thus exclude Rachel from such promotion, but she could not bring herself to believe that Luke Rowan would be so fatuous, so ignorant of his own interests, so deluded, as to marry that girl from Bragg’s End!

It is thus that the Mrs. Tappitts of the world regard other women’s daughters when they have undergone any disappointment as to their own.

She had no reason for wishing well to Rowan, and would not have cared if he had taken to his bosom a harpy in marriage;

In the meantime Tappitt sat sullen and wretched in the countinghouse. Such moments occur in the lives of most of us—moments in which the real work of life is brought to an end—and they cannot but be sad.

It is very well to talk of ease and dignity; but ease of spirit comes from action only, and the world’s dignity is given to those who do the world’s work.

Let no man put his neck from out of the collar till in truth he can no longer draw the weight attached to it. Tappitt had now got rid of his collar, and he sat very wretched in his brewery countinghouse.

It is very well to talk of ease and dignity; but ease of spirit comes from action only, and the world’s dignity is given to those who do the world’s work.

Let no man put his neck from out of the collar till in truth he can no longer draw the weight attached to it.

Tappitt had now got rid of his collar, and he sat very wretched in his brewery countinghouse.

“Ah! that was cruel. But you did not understand. I suppose no man can understand. I couldn’t have believed it myself till—till after you had gone away.

It seemed as though all the sun had deserted us, and that everything was cold and dark.

”