The Uncalled quotes

“I should like to know what else I’m a-goin’ to do, Mis’ Austin.

Charity begins at home. My man’s got to go to work, an’ he’s got to have his breakfast: there’s cares fur the livin’ as well as fur the dead, I say

, an’ I don’t believe in tryin’ to be so good to them that’s gone that you furgit them that’s with you.”

“True enough.

Protection is a good dish, but a beatin’s a purty bitter sauce to take with it.

”

For haste, for unadulterated despatch, commend me to the county burying.

The body politic is busy and has no time to waste on an inert human body. It does its duty to its own interest and to the pauper dead when the body is dropped with all celerity into the ground. The county is philosophical:

“Yes, dear, awful far,” she answered. But she was wrong.

Heaven is not far from the warm heart and tender hands of a good woman.

The child’s head drooped, and he drowsed in her arms.

And yet he could not hate Miss Hester, for it was constantly impressed upon him that all was being done for his good, and the word “duty” was burned like a fiery cross upon his heart and brain.

There is a bit of the pagan in every natural boy, and to give him too much to reverence taxes his powers until they are worn and impotent by the time he reaches manhood.

Under Miss Hester’s tutelage too many things became sacred to Fred Brent. It was wicked to cough in church, as it was a sacrilege to play with a hymnbook. His training was the apotheosis of the nonessential.

Under Miss Hester’s tutelage too many things became sacred to Fred Brent. It was wicked to cough in church, as it was a sacrilege to play with a hymnbook.

His training was the apotheosis of the nonessential.

But, after all, there is no rebel like Nature. She is an iconoclast.

When he was less than ten years old, an incident occurred that will in a measure indicate the manner of his treatment.

Miss Prime’s prescription for making a good boy was two parts punishment, two parts admonition, and six parts prayer.

Accordingly, as the watchful and sympathetic neighbours said, “she an’ that pore child fairly lived in church.”

“

It’s funny to me, Miss Hester, how it is that Christians know so much more about the devil’s ways than they do about the Lord’s.

They’re allus a-sayin’, ‘the Lord moves in a mysterious way,’ but they kin allus put their finger on the devil.”

I know that blood will tell,” they passed out, and the grinning face of Billy Tompkins was the last thing that Fred saw. It followed him home. The hot tears fell from his eyes, but they did not quench the flames that were consuming him.

There is nothing so terrible as the just anger of a child⁠—terrible in its very powerlessness.

Polyphemus is a giant, though the mountain hold him down.

It followed him home. The hot tears fell from his eyes, but they did not quench the flames that were consuming him. There is nothing so terrible as the just anger of a child—terrible in its very powerlessness.

Polyphemus is a giant, though the mountain hold him down.

Next morning, when Fred went to school, Billy Tompkins with a crowd of boys about was waiting to deride him; but at sight of his face they stopped. He walked straight up to his enemy and began striking him with all his might.

That night no report of the fight went home. Fred Brent held the master hand.

In life it is sometimes God and sometimes the devil that comes to the aid of oppressed humanity.

From the means, it is often hard to tell whose handiwork are the results.

Either he descends to her level, or she draws him up, unconsciously, perhaps, to her own plane.

Girls are missionaries who convert boys. Boys are mostly heathens.

When a boy has a girl, he remembers to put on his cuffs and collars, and he doesn’t put his necktie into his pocket on the way to school.

The beverage of which she was invited to partake was but a pretext, but neither the one nor the other admitted as much. Each understood perfectly, as by a tacit agreement, and each tried to deceive herself and the other as to motives and objects.

There is some subtle tie between tea-drinking and gossip.

It is over their dainty cups that women dissect us men and damn their sisters. Some of the quality of the lemon they take in their tea gets into their tongues.

There is some subtle tie between tea-drinking and gossip. It is over their dainty cups that women dissect us men and damn their sisters. Some of the quality of the lemon they take in their tea gets into their tongues.

Tea is to talk what dew is to a plant, a gentle nourishing influence, which gives to its product much of its own quality.

There are two acids in the tea which cultured women take. There is only one in the beverage brewed by commonplace people. But that is enough.

The girl stood for a moment looking after him; her eye was moist. Then she pouted, “Fred’s real cross tonight,” and went in.

It is one of the glaring sarcasms of life to see with what complacency a shallow woman skims the surface of tragedy and thinks that she has sounded the depths.

Fred continued his walk towards home. He was thinking. It ran in him that Elizabeth was a good deal of a fool; and then he felt horrified with himself for thinking it.

Hodges replied, “Well, I’m glad the Lord has showed you the errors of your way an’ brought you around to a sense o’ your dooty to Him an’ to me.”

Poor, blind, conceited humanity! Interpreters of God, indeed!

We reduce the Deity to vulgar fractions. We place our own little ambitions and inclinations before a shrine, and label them “divine messages.” We set up our Delphian tripod, and we are the priest and oracles.

With our short sight we affect to take a comprehensive view of eternity. Our horizon is the universe. We spy on the Divine and try to surprise His secrets, or to sneak into His confidence by stealth. We make God the eternal a puppet.

We measure infinity with a foot-rule.

He had hardly got into the house before he saw from her manner that something was wrong, and he wondered what it could be. He soon learned.

It is only praise that is slow.

“Oh, Fred,” said the girl, reproachfully, “is it true that you have been playing baseball?”

he bade me keep on, saying that I had talent. I didn’t believe it at first. But when a fellow keeps dinging at another with one remark, after a while he grows to believe it, especially when it is pleasant.

It is vastly easy to believe what we want to believe.

So I came to think that I could write, and my soul was fired with the ambition to make a name for myself in literature.

Many a fireside saint has said, “Why did not Savonarola tempt the hot ploughshares? God would not have let them burn him.”

Faith is a beautiful thing. But Savonarola had the ploughshares at his feet.

The children of Israel stepped into the Red Sea before the waters parted, but then Moses was with them, and, what was more, Pharaoh was behind them.

“

Hester, yore dooty’ll kill you yit. It’s a wonder you don’t git tired a-lookin’ it in the face.

”

Throughout the prayer, but one thought was running through Frederick Brent’s mind, and his heart was crying in its anguish, “Oh, my God, my God, why do they hound me so?”

It is a terrible thing, this first effort before the home people, especially when home has not been kind.

When he arose to meet the people’s eyes, his face was haggard and he felt weak. But unflinchingly he swept his eyes over the crowd, and that instant’s glance brought before him all the panorama of the past years.

the beads of perspiration broke out on his brow; but ever as the essential questions came to him his tongue seemed to move of its own volition, without command from the brain, and the murmurs of approval told him that he was answering aright.

Never did man struggle harder for brilliant success than this one for ignominious failure.

Then some whisper in his consciousness told him that it was over. He felt the laying of hands upon his head.

Mrs. Hodges was startled at the speech. She felt vaguely that there was a new element in the boy’s character since morning. He was on the instant a man.

It was as if clay had suddenly hardened in the potter’s hands.

She could no longer mould or ply him. In that moment she recognised the fact.

You are saying that it is the old Tom Brent in me showing itself at last. Yes, it has smouldered in me long, and I am glad. I think better of that spirit because it was waked into life to resent meanness.

I would rather be the most roistering drunkard that ever reeled down these streets than call myself a Christian and carouse over the dead characters of my fellows.

“Tonight I feel for the first time that I am myself. I give you back gladly what you have given me. I am no longer your pastor. We are well quit.

but one and all they hurried by without even so much as a glance at the dusty traveller. Had one of them looked at him, he would merely have said, mentally, “Some country bumpkin come in to see the sights of town and be buncoed.”

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of the unknown man in a crowd.

A feeling of desolation took hold upon Brent, so he turned down a side-street in order to be more out of the main line of business. It was a fairly respectable quarter;

He was wrapped in a mantle of habit which he was ashamed to display and yet could not shake off.

The pendulum never stops its swing in the middle of the arc.

So he would have gone to the other extreme and revelled in the pleasures whose very breath had been forbidden to his youth;

“

There’s none so blind as those who don’t want to see.

”

His lip involuntarily curled when he thought of conversion. He was disgusted with all men and principles.

One man offends, and a whole system suffers.

He felt a peculiar self-consciousness, a self-glorification in his own misery. Placing the accumulated morality of his own life against the full-grown evil of his father’s, it angered him to think that by the intervention of a seemingly slight quantity the results were made equal.

“

Oh, never mind that, Hester. God ain’t a-goin’ to ask you to find a way.

”

but it is not so. My life has been very full here of late, it is true, but not so full as to exclude you and good Aunt Hester. I feel that I am growing. I can take good full breaths here.

I couldn’t in Dexter: the air was too rarefied by religion.

”