The Warden quotes

having been many years a widower, and having married his eldest daughter to a son of the bishop a very short time before his installation to the office of precentor.

Scandal at Barchester affirmed that had it not been for the beauty of his daughter, Mr. Harding would have remained a minor canon; but here probably Scandal lied, as she so often does;

for even as a minor canon no one had been more popular among his reverend brethren in the close than Mr. Harding; and Scandal, before she had reprobated Mr.

’Tis there alone that he unbends, and comes down from his high church pedestal to the level of a mortal man. In the world Dr. Grantly never lays aside that demeanour which so well becomes him.

He has all the dignity of an ancient saint with the sleekness of a modern bishop; he is always the same; he is always the archdeacon; unlike Homer, he never nods.

Even with his father-in-law, even with the bishop and dean, he maintains that sonorous tone and lofty deportment which strikes awe into the young hearts of Barchester, and absolutely cows the whole parish of Plumstead Episcopi.

He had no idea of putting himself in the hands of a lawyer.

He wanted law from a lawyer as he did a coat from a tailor, because he could not make it so well himself;

and he thought Finney the fittest man in Barchester for his purpose. In one respect, at any rate, he was right: Finney was humility itself.

Dr. Grantly would be ready enough to take up his cudgel against all comers on behalf of the church militant, but he would do so on the distasteful ground of the church’s infallibility. Such a contest would give no comfort to Mr. Harding’s doubts.

He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.

I have said before that Dr. Grantly was the working man of the diocese, and that his father the bishop was somewhat inclined to an idle life. So it was;

A hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it’s the likes of you that will get it?”—and he pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. “

Did any of us ever do anything worth half the money?

Was it to make gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world turned against us, and we couldn’t longer earn our daily bread?

“I’d so much sooner remain quiet in the matter,” said he, in an apologetic voice.

“Quiet!” said the archdeacon, still speaking with his brazen trumpet; “do you wish to be ruined in quiet?”

“Why, if I am to be ruined, certainly.”

Her brother understood immediately the nature and intention of the peace-offering; but it was not so easy for him to behave well in the matter, as it was for Mr. Harding.

It is much less difficult for the sufferer to be generous than for the oppressor.

John Bold felt that he could not go to the warden’s party: he never loved Eleanor better than he did now;

Had Bold been judging of another lover and of another lady, he might have understood all this as well as we do; but in matters of love men do not see clearly in their own affairs.

They say that faint heart never won fair lady; and it is amazing to me how fair ladies are won, so faint are often men’s hearts!

Were it not for the kindness of their nature, that seeing the weakness of our courage they will occasionally descend from their impregnable fortresses, and themselves aid us in effecting their own defeat, too often would they escape unconquered if not unscathed, and free of …

She had no startling brilliancy of beauty, no pearly whiteness, no radiant carnation. She had not the majestic contour that rivets attention, demands instant wonder, and then disappoints by the coldness of its charms.

You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart.

She had never appeared more lovely to her lover than she now did. Her face was animated though it was serious, and her full dark lustrous eyes shone with anxious energy;

Alas! she could say nothing of this now. In speaking of Mr. Bold, her father put him aside as one whose thoughts and sayings and acts could be of no moment.

Gentle reader, did you ever feel yourself snubbed?

Did you ever, when thinking much of your own importance, find yourself suddenly reduced to a nonentity? Such was Eleanor’s feeling now.

put you beyond the pale of men’s charity; make you odious to your dearest friends, and turn you into a monster to be pointed at by the finger!” Oh heavens! and this is Mount Olympus!

It is a fact amazing to ordinary mortals that The Jupiter is never wrong.

With what endless care, with what unsparing labour, do we not strive to get together for our great national council the men most fitting to compose it. And how we fail! Parliament is always wrong:

ministers courted him, though perhaps they knew not his name; bishops feared him; judges doubted their own verdicts unless he confirmed them; and generals, in their councils of war, did not consider more deeply what the enemy would do, than what The Jupiter would say.

Tom Towers never boasted of The Jupiter; he scarcely ever named the paper even to the most intimate of his friends; he did not even wish to be spoken of as connected with it; but he did not the less value his privileges, or think the less of his own importance.

It is probable that Tom Towers considered himself the most powerful man in Europe; and so he walked on from day to day, studiously striving to look a man, but knowing within his breast that he was a god.

“The public is defrauded,” said he, “whenever private considerations are allowed to have weight.” Quite true, thou greatest oracle of the middle of the nineteenth century, thou sententious proclaimer of the purity of the press;—the public is defrauded when it is purposely misled.

Poor public! how often is it misled! against what a world of fraud has it to contend!

Bold took his leave, and got out of the room as quickly as he could, inwardly denouncing his friend Tom Towers as a prig and a humbug. “I know he wrote those articles,” said Bold to himself. “I know he got his information from me.

so he purchased a copy, and hurrying back to his lodgings, proceeded to ascertain what Mr. Popular Sentiment had to say to the public on the subject which had lately occupied so much of his own attention.

In former times great objects were attained by great work.

When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument.

We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to do so.

If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling numbers.

Of all such reformers Mr. Sentiment is the most powerful. It is incredible the number of evil practices he has put down:

a man to be sought for on great emergencies, but ill-adapted for ordinary services; a man whom you would ask to defend your property, but to whom you would be sorry to confide your love.

He was bright as a diamond, and as cutting, and also as unimpressionable.

He knew everyone whom to know was an honour, but he was without a friend; he wanted none, however, and knew not the meaning of the word in other than its parliamentary sense. A friend!

“Isn’t it?” asked the warden, innocently. “Well, at any rate, I’ve done it now. Sir Abraham didn’t seem to think it so very strange.”

The archdeacon gave a sigh that would have moved a man-of-war.

“But, papa, what did you say to Sir Abraham?” asked the lady.

“Thank ye, my dear! I think I’ll go this afternoon.”

The tamest animal will turn when driven too hard, and even Mr. Harding was beginning to fight for his own way.

“I suppose you won’t be back before three?” said the lady, addressing her husband.