Important Quotations Explained
1. I have
a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these
pages, for I know I am not clever.
2. They appear
to take as little note of one another, as any two people, enclosed
within the same walls, could. But whether each evermore watches
and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation;
whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and
never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the
other knows—all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.
3. It was
grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the
rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder,
and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the tremendous
powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to consider how
beneficent they are, and how upon the smallest flower and leaf there
was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage, which seemed
to make creation new again.
4. And now
I come to a part of my story, touching myself very nearly indeed,
and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance occurred. . . .
I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that subject, but
have written them as faithfully as my memory has recalled them.
And I hope to do so, and mean to do so, the same down to the last
words of these pages: which I see now, not so very far before me.
5. Thus Chesney
Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and vacancy;
with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry lowering;
so sombre and motionless always . . . ; passion and pride, even
to the stranger's eye, have died away from the place in Lincolnshire,
and yielded it to dull repose.
