Bokelskere.no

Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher; cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr Bradley Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. The decent hair-guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent silver watch was an object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher have gone round his neck and taken care of him. Of him, insensible. Because he did not love Miss Peecher.

But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school- pupils, all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so many fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering her flowers, as Mr Bradley Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden attached to her small official residence, with little windows like the eyes in needles, and little doors like the covers of school-books.

The schools -for they were twofold, as the sexes - were down in that district of the flat country tending to the Thames, where Kent and Surrey meet, and where the railways still bestride the market- gardens that will soon die under them. The schools were newly built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's palace. They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy neighbourhood taken in blocks out of a box by a child of particularly incoherent mind, and set up anyhow; here, one side of a new street; there, a large solitary public-house facing nowhere; here, another unfinished street already in ruins; there, a church; here, an immense new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old country villa; then, a medley of black ditch, sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly cultivated kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned canal, and disorder of frowziness and fog. As if the child had given the table a kick, and gone to sleep.

Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself.

it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view

and the answers she got to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable of explanation to a woman's reason.

but it was not entirely out of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and Creek. Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.

Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings towards women than towards grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage-tie. On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.

[...] […] and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.

Kunde jeg få det, som jeg vilde ha' det derhjemme, så skulde alle de uprivilegerede slå sig sammen og stifte et stærkt, resolut og pågående parti, hvis program skulde være rettet udelukkende på praktiske og produktive reformer, på en meget rummelig udvidelse af stemmeretten, regulering af kvindernes stilling, folkeundervisningens frigørelse fra alskens middelalderligheder o.s.v. De teoretisk-politiske spørsmål kunde gerne hvile en stund; de er ikke synderlig produktive. Kom et sådant parti i stand, vilde det nuværende venstreparti vise sig at være, hvad det i virkeligheden er og ifølge sin sammensætning må være, - et centrumsparti.

The parsonage was inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except preaching the morning sermon.

Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon's words seemed to leave unsaid: what believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

"Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr. Casaubon?"
"Not that I know of."
"I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat his soup so."

"But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a little in our family. I had it myself — that love of knowledge, and going into everything — a little too much — it took me too far; though that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female-line; or it runs underground like the rivers in Greece, you know — it comes out in the sons. Clever sons, clever mothers. I went a good deal into that, at one time."

Ideerne vokser og forplanter sig langsomt oppe hos os; [...].

[...] and she could not bear that Mr Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible. She piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use of his accomplishment, to save Mr Casaubon's eyes. Three times she wrote.

A man's mind - what there is of it - has always the advantage of being masculine - as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm - and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.

(...) enkelte menneskers anerkjennelse eller beundring er like uvelkommen som kritikk.

Den eneste, der i Norge er trådt frit, djervt og modigt frem til fordel for mig, det er Bjørnson. Det ligner ham. Han har i sandhed et stort kongeligt sind og jeg skal aldrig glemme ham det.