The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane quotes

However, on this 20th April the London mob forgot the frost, forgot the quartern loaf and the national debt, and prepared for a holiday, inspired thereto, not so much by Lewis the Eighteenth as by the warmth and brilliant sky.

There are two factors in all human bliss⁠—an object and the subject.

The object may be a trifle, but the condition of the subject is most important.

the mob crying out, “God bless your Majesty!” as if they owed him all they had, and even their lives. It was very touching, people thought at the time, and so it was.

Is there anything more touching than the waste of human loyalty and love?

As we read the history of the Highlands or a story of Jacobite loyalty such as that of Cooper’s Admiral Bluewater, dear to boys, we sadden that destiny should decree that in a world in which piety is not too plentiful it should run so …

These, however, Zachariah thought minor matters, if, indeed, he ever noticed them. “The great thing was, that she was”—sometimes this and sometimes that—and so it was settled.

Unfortunately in marriage it is so difficult to be sure of what the great thing is, and what the little thing is, the little thing becoming so frightfully big afterwards!

Theologically, Mrs. Zachariah was as strict as her husband, and more so, as far as outward observance went, for her strictness was not tempered by those secular interests which to him were so dear.

She had told him of it a score of times; but he did not amend, and seemed to think her particularity rather a vice than a virtue.

So it is that, as love gilds all defects, lack of love sees nothing but defect in what is truly estimable.

Notwithstanding the sugar-tongs, Zachariah—excusable, perhaps, this time, considering the warmth of the speech he was making against the late war—pushed them aside, and helped himself after the usual fashion. A cloud came over Mrs. Zachariah’s face;

but when his rigid, religious companion in the hackney coach felt them sweet, and was better pleased with them than she had ever been with her husband’s caresses, she sinned, and she knew that she sinned.

What curiously composite creatures we are!

Zachariah for a moment was half pleased, for she had now clearly wronged him. The next moment, however, he was wretched. He took up the teapot; it was empty; the tea-caddy was locked up.

What was the cause of her gaiety? Was she thinking improperly of the Major? No. If she had gone with Zachariah alone to the theatre would she have been so cheerful? No. Did she really think she loved her husband better? Yes.

The human heart, even the heart of Mrs. Coleman, is beyond our analysis.

… graceful evolutions with the shawl which was flung, now on one shoulder and now on the other, each movement exquisitely resolving itself, with the most perfect ease, into the one following, and designed apparently to show the capacity of a beautiful figure for poetic expression.

Wave fell into wave along every line of her body, and occasionally a posture was arrested, to pass away in an instant into some new combination.

There was no definite character in the dance beyond mere beauty. It was melody for melody’s sake. A remarkable change, too, came over the face of the performer. She looked serious; but it was not a seriousness produced by any strain.

“All right, ma’am; if you like it that way, it’s no odds to me;” and Mrs. Coleman went her way upstairs really believing that she had prevented the commission of a crime.

Let those of us cast the stone who can take oath that in their own morality there is no casuistry.

Probably ours is worse than hers, because hers was traditional and ours is self-manufactured.

but he could not do it now, and he retreated in silence. Nevertheless, when he got out into the Street he felt as if he could have rushed back and gripped the brute’s throat till he had squeezed the soul out of his carcass.

Those of us who have craved unsuccessfully for permission to do what the Maker of us all has fitted us to do alone understand how revolutions are generated.

Talk about the atrocities of the Revolution!

Is not humanity the commonest and cheapest thing in the world?” But as yet his faith was unshaken, and he repelled the doubt as a temptation of Satan.

Blessed is the man who can assign promptly everything which is not in harmony with himself to a devil, and so get rid of it.

The pitiful case is that of the distracted mortal who knows not what is the degree of authority which his thoughts and impulses possess; who is constantly bewildered by contrary messages, and has no evidence as to their authenticity. Zachariah had his rule still;

As soon as they were in the street Pauline said,

“Father, I abhor that woman. If she lives she will kill her husband.”

Mrs. Coleman, on the other hand, at the same moment said, “Zachariah, Pauline and Caillaud cannot come to this house again.”

He went out of the room in a rage, and downstairs into the street, going straight to his work.

It is a terrible moment when the first bitter quarrel takes place, and when hatred, even if it be hatred for the moment only first finds expression.

That moment can never be recalled! Is it ever really forgotten, or really forgiven?

not the sword of the Lord, and aching hearts in that bitter March weather felt that there was something worse than the cold to be borne at they struggled homewards. Others, amongst whom was our Methodist orator, were not discouraged.

It is a poor religion which makes no provision for disaster, and even for apparently final failure.

The test of faith is its power under defeat, and these silly God-fearing souls argued to themselves that their Master’s time was not their time; that perhaps they were being punished for their sins, and that when it pleased Him they would triumph.

His wife, as Mrs. Carter had said, was asleep. He went to her bedside and looked at her. She was pale and worn. Lying there unconscious, all the defects which had separated him from her vanished.

In sleep and death the divine element of which we are compounded reappears, and we cease to hate or criticise; we can only weep or pray.

He looked and looked again. The hours of first love and courtship passed before him;

Zachariah slept but little, and at four o’clock, with a bright moon, he started. He met with no particular adventure, and in the evening found himself once more in a wilderness of strange streets, with no outlook, face to face with the Red Sea.

Happy is the man who, if he is to have an experience of this kind, is trained to it when young, and is not suddenly brought to it after a life of security.

Zachariah, although he was desponding, could now say he had been in the same straits before, and had survived. That is the consolation of all consolations to us. We have actually touched and handled the skeleton, and after all we have not been struck dead.

Zachariah, although he was desponding, could now say he had been in the same straits before, and had survived. That is the consolation of all consolations to us.

We have actually touched and handled the skeleton, and after all we have not been struck dead.

“O socii, neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum, O passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem. Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantes Accestis scopulos; vos et Cyclopia saxa Experti. Revocate animos, moestumque timorem Mittite; forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.”

“God bless the poor dear man!” she burst out; “to think of finding you here, and not to have told us before. But I suppose you couldn’t. Directly as I got your letter off I came, and here I am, you see.”

Her presence was like the southwest wind and sunlight after long northeasterly gloom and frost.

Astonishing is that happy power which some people possess which enables them at once to dispel depression and even disease. A woman like Mrs. Carter comes into a house where there is misery and darkness; where the sufferer is possessed by demons;

“Lord a mercy, there you are again—trouble and expense! What trouble will you be? And as for expense, one would think you’d been living like a Lord Mayor to hear you talk.

What are we made for if not to help one another?

”

We may laugh, and call him a fool to be disturbed by a forecast of what is not going to happen for millions of years; but he was not a fool.

He was one of those unhappy creatures whom an idea has power to shake, and almost to overmaster.

Ferguson was a Christian, and the thought of the destruction of our present dwelling-place, with every particle of life on it, did not trouble him. He had his refuge in Revelation.

He did not feel to their full extent the tremendous consequences of this new doctrine, and the shock which it has given to so much philosophy and so many theories, but he felt quite enough, and wished he had never opened the volume.

There are many truths, no doubt, which we are not robust enough to bear.

In the main it is correct that the only way to conquer is boldly to face every fact, however horrible it may seem to be, and think, and think, till we pass it and come to a higher fact;

However, he began to get better, and forthwith other matters occupied his mind. His difficulty was not fairly slain, pierced through the midst by some heaven-directed arrow, but it was evaded and forgotten.

Health, sweet blood, unimpeded action of the heart, are the divine narcotics which put to sleep these enemies to our peace and enable us to pass happily through life.

Without these blessings a man need not stir three steps without finding a foe able to give him his death-stroke.

Zachariah looked at Pauline, who rose and threw her shawl over her shoulders. Her lips were tightly shut, but she was herself. The warder opened the door. Zachariah took his friend’s hand, held it for a moment, and then threw his arms round his neck.

There is a pathos in parting which the mere loss through absence does not explain.

We all of us feel it, even if there is to be a meeting again in a few months, and we are overcome by incomprehensible emotion when we turn back down the pier, unable any longer to discern the waving of the handkerchief, or when …

It would have turned a deaf ear to any debate on the nature of ethical obligation; but it was very keen indeed in apportioning blame to its neighbours who had sinned, and in deciding how far they had gone wrong.

Cowfold in other words believed that flesh and blood, and not ideas, are the school and the religion for most of us, and that we learn a language by the examples rather than by the rules.

The young scholar fresh from his study is impatient at what he considers the unprofitable gossip about the people round the corner;

Mr. Broad very much preferred the indirect mode of doing good, and if he thought a brother had done wrong, contented himself with praying in private for him. He was, however, not a hypocrite, that is to say, not an ordinary novel or stage hypocrite.

There is no such thing as a human being simply hypocritical or simply sincere.

We are all hypocrites, more or less, in every word and every action, and, what is more, in every thought. It is a question simply of degree. Furthermore, there are degrees of natural capacity for sincerity, and Mr.

He was, however, not a hypocrite, that is to say, not an ordinary novel or stage hypocrite. There is no such thing as a human being simply hypocritical or simply sincere.

We are all hypocrites, more or less, in every word and every action, and, what is more, in every thought.

It is a question simply of degree. Furthermore, there are degrees of natural capacity for sincerity, and Mr. Broad was probably as sincere as his build of soul and body allowed him to be.

All of them had collected in the pouring rain and were watching the outfall in the ditches. To their unspeakable amazement the pipes were all running! Shott scratched its head and was utterly bewildered.

A new idea in a brain not accustomed to the invasion of ideas produces a disturbance like a revolution.

It causes giddiness almost as bad as that of a fit, and an extremely unpleasant sensation of having been whirled round and turned head over heels. It was the beginning of new things in Shott, the beginning of a breakdown in its traditions;

Delightful their chatter was to them. What does it signify to eighteen years what is said on such an afternoon by seventeen years, when seventeen years is in a charming white muslin dress, with the prettiest hat?

Words are of importance between me and you, who care little or nothing for one another. But there is a thrice blessed time when words are nothing.

The real word is that which is not uttered. We may be silent, or we may be eloquent with nonsense or sense—it is all one.

for his thoughts were of a different cast from his waking thoughts; fearful forebodings; a horror of great darkness. He rose and bathed his head in cold water, and lay down again; but it was of no use, and he walked about his room.

What an epoch is the first sleepless night⁠—the night when the first wrench has been given us by the Destinies to loosen us from the love of life; when we have first said to ourselves that there are worse things than death!

George’s father always slept well, but the mother stirred at the slightest sound. She heard her boy on the other side of the wall pacing to and fro, and she slipped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and went to listen.

For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave to his wife?

Ah, yes! he does leave them; but in his heart does he never go back? And if he never does, does his mother ever leave him?

In the morning Mrs. Allen was a little pale, and was asked by her husband if she was unwell, but she held her peace. George, too, rose, went about his work, and in the afternoon walked up to the cottage to meet his wife there.

“Ah, Brother Allen—offended! You remember, no doubt, the text, ‘Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth.’ ”

It is a very good thing to have at one’s elbow a Bible of rules for our guidance; but unfortunately we relieve ourselves very often of the most necessary inquiry whether the rule applies to the particular case in hand.

Mr. Allen had the greatest possible respect for St. Paul, but he felt sure the apostle was where he had no business to be just at that particular moment. George also saw the irrelevance of the quotation, and discerned exactly where it did not fit.

“Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest.” He put down his spectacles after he had read these words, for he never used a note, and said: “

If your religion doesn’t help you, it is no religion for you; you had better be without it.

I don’t mean if it doesn’t help you to a knowledge of a future life or of the way to heaven. Everybody will say his religion does that.

‘Vanity of vanities,’ you will cry, ‘all is vanity.’ My young friends, young men and young women, you are particularly prone to go wrong in this matter. You not only lay your possessions but yourselves on altars by the roadside.”

It was the first time George had ever heard anything from any public speaker which came home to him, and he wondered if Mr. Bradshaw knew his history.

He interpreted the discourse after his own way, and Priscilla was ever before him.

Just as though the world were divided like the goats and the sheep in the gospel. That is a passage that I never could quite understand. I never, hardly, see a pure breed either of goat or sheep.

I never see anybody who deserves to go straight to heaven or who deserves to go straight to hell.

When the judgment day comes it will be a difficult task. Why, Pauline, my dear, I am a humbug myself.”

The highest form of martyrdom, though, is not even living for the sake of a cause, but living without one, merely because it is your duty to live.

If you are called upon to testify to a great truth, it is easy to sing in flames.

Yes, yes, Mr. George, the saints whom I would canonise are not martyrs for a cause, but those who have none.”

If you are called upon to testify to a great truth, it is easy to sing in flames.

Yes, yes, Mr. George, the saints whom I would canonise are not martyrs for a cause, but those who have none.

”

On the Monday George and his father went home.

It is very depressing, after being with people who have been at their best, and with whom we have been at our best, to descend upon ordinary existence.

George felt it particularly as he stood in the shop on Tuesday morning and reflected that for the whole of that day—for his father was out—he should probably not say nor hear a word for which he cared a single straw.

his anger was once more forgotten, and once more he was reconciled with kisses and self-humiliation. The next morning, however, as he went to the square, the conversation of the night before returned to him. “What does it all mean?” he cried to himself. “

Would to God it were either one thing or another! I could be happy if I really cared for her, and if I hated her downright I could endure it like any other calamity which cannot be altered; but this is more than I can bear!

”

that one side could say to the other, ‘You have heard all our logic, and we have heard all yours;’ now then, let us settle it. ‘Who is the strongest and best drilled?’ I believe in insurrection.

Everlasting debate⁠—and it is not genuine debate, for nobody really ranges himself alongside his enemy’s strongest points⁠—demoralises us all.

It encourages all sorts of sophistry, becomes mere manoeuvring, and saps people’s faith in the truth. In half an hour, if two persons were to sit opposite one another, they could muster every single reason for and against Free Trade.

He bent it down, and her damp brown hair—the beautiful brown hair he had loved so—lay on his forehead, and its scent was all about him once more.

“George, my dear,” she just breathed out, “I am a poor silly girl, but I always loved you.”

He stopped her instantly with his kisses, but Death had stopped her too. He recoiled for a moment, and with a sudden scream. “O God, she’s gone!” he fell into the arms of his nurse, who stood behind him.

Surely a real religion, handed down from century to century, ought to have accumulated a store of consolatory truths which will be of some help to us in time of need.

If it can tell us nothing, if we cannot face a single disaster any the better for it, and if we never dream of turning to it when we are in distress, of what value is it?

There is one religious teacher, however, which seldom fails those who are in health, and, at last, did not fail him. He was helped by no priest and by no philosophy;