Chapter 1

Produced by David Widger

QUOTES AND IMAGES FROM GEORGE MEREDITH

THE WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH

PROSE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

George Meredith in 1893

The Sitting Room, Flint Cottage--May 18th 1909

Age 35

Age 68

Age 69

Age 72

Age 80

A lover must have his delusions, just as a man must have a skin

A madman gets madder when you talk reason to him

A night that had shivered repose

A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin

A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger

A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting

A tear would have overcome him--She had not wept

A tragic comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver

A fleet of South-westerly rain-clouds had been met in mid-sky

A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry

A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion

A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman

A woman's at the core of every plot man plotteth

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power

A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird

A kindly sense of superiority

A young philosopher's an old fool!

A bird that won't roast or boil or stew

A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense

A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle

A great oration may be a sedative

A very doubtful benefit

A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side

A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans

A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization

A style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth

A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind wit

A fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin

A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar

A common age once, when he married her; now she had grown old

A share of pity for the objects she despised

A woman rises to her husband. But a man is what he is

A stew's a stew, and not a boiling to shreds

A marriage without love is dishonour

A plunge into the deep is of little moment

A sixpence kindly meant is worth any crown-piece that's grudged

A man to be trusted with the keys of anything

A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon

A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines

A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it

A man who rejected medicine in extremity

A lady's company-smile

A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot

A youth who is engaged in the occupation of eating his heart

A whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret

A superior position was offered her by her being silent

A contented Irishman scarcely seems my countryman

Abject sense of the lack of a circumference

Above all things I detest the writing for money

Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below

Absolute freedom could be the worst of perils

Accidents are the specific for averting the maladies of age

Accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory

Accounting for it, is not the same as excusing

Accustomed to be paid for by his country

Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art

Active despair is a passion that must be superseded

Add on a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to follow

Adept in the lie implied

Admirable scruples of an inveterate borrower

Admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds

Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight

Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality

Advised not to push at a shut gate

Affected misapprehensions

Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening

After forty, men have married their habits

After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship

After a big blow, a very little one scarcely counts

Agostino was enjoying the smoke of paper cigarettes

Ah! how sweet to waltz through life with the right partner

Ah! we're in the enemy's country now

Ah! we fall into their fictions

Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity

Alike believe that Providence is for them

All of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement

All concessions to the people have been won from fear

All passed too swift for happiness

All women are the same--Know one, know all

All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked

All are friends who sit at table

All flattery is at somebody's expense

Allowed silly sensitiveness to prevent the repair

Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon

Always the shout for more produced it ("News")

Am I ill? I must be hungry!

Am I thy master, or thou mine?

Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning

Amiable mirror as being wilfully ruffled to confuse

Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes

Amused after their tiresome work of slaughter

An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer

An obedient creature enough where he must be

An angry woman will think the worst

An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top

An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity

An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them!

And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence

And so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true

And he passed along the road, adds the Philosopher

And, ladies, if you will consent to be likened to a fruit

And her voice, against herself, was for England

And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain)

And it's one family where the dog is pulled by the collar

And not any of your grand ladies can match my wife at home

And to these instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous"

And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat

And never did a stroke of work in my life

And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end?

Anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusement

Anguish to think of having bent the knee for nothing

Anticipate opposition by initiating measures

Any man is in love with any woman

Any excess pushes to craziness

Appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of convictions

Appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker

Arch-devourer Time

Are we practical?' penetrates the bosom of an English audience

Aristocratic assumption of licence

Arm'd with Fear the Foe finds passage to the vital part

Arrest the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer

Art of despising what he coveted

Art of speaking on politics tersely

As when nations are secretly preparing for war

As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness

As secretive as they are sensitive

As the Lord decided, so it would end! "Oh, delicious creed!"

As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!

As faith comes--no saying how; one swears by them

As if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula

As little trouble as the heath when the woods are swept

As if the age were the injury!

As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them

As fair play as a woman's lord could give her

As for comparisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire

As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos

As becomes them, they do not look ahead

Ashamed of letting his ears be filled with secret talk

Ask not why, where reason never was

Ask pardon of you, without excusing myself

Assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights

At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly

At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we can have

Attacked my conscience on the cowardly side

Automatic creature is subject to the laws of its construction

Avoid the position that enforces publishing

Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself

Bad laws are best broken

Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good

Bade his audience to beware of princes

Bandied the weariful shuttlecock of gallantry

Barriers are for those who cannot fly

Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues

Be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles

Be what you seem, my little one

Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone

Be good and dull, and please everybody

Be the woman and have the last word!

Bear in mind that we are sentimentalists--The eye is our servant

Beauchamp's career

Beautiful servicelessness

Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness

Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved

Beauty is rare; luckily is it rare

Because you loved something better than me

Because he stood so high with her now he feared the fall

Because men can't abide praise of another man

Becoming air of appropriation that made it family history

Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence

Began the game of Pull

Beginning to have a movement to kiss the whip

Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beauty

Being heard at night, in the nineteenth century

Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women

Belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience

Believed in her love, and judged it by the strength of his own

Bent double to gather things we have tossed away

Better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet

Between love grown old and indifference ageing to love

Beware the silent one of an assembly!

Beyond a plot of flowers, a gold-green meadow dipped to a ridge

Bitten hard at experience, and know the value of a tooth

Borrower to be dancing on Fortune's tight-rope above the old abyss

Botched mendings will only make them worse

Bound to assure everybody at table he was perfectly happy

Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls

Boys, of course--but men, too!

Boys are unjust

Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them

Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it

Brains will beat Grim Death if we have enough of them

Brief negatives are not re-assuring to a lover's uneasy mind

British hunger for news; second only to that for beef

Brittle is foredoomed

Brotherhood among the select who wear masks instead of faces

But I leave it to you

But a woman must now and then ingratiate herself

But great, powerful London--the new universe to her spirit

But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death

But the flower is a thing of the season; the flower drops off

But you must be beautiful to please some men

But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly

But the key to young men is the ambition, or, in the place of it.....

But love for a parent is not merely duty

But a great success is full of temptations

But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)

But is there such a thing as happiness

But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing

By our manner of loving we are known

By forbearance, put it in the wrong

By resisting, I made him a tyrant

By nature incapable of asking pardon

Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college

Call of the great world's appetite for more (Invented news)

Calm fanaticism of the passion of love

Can you not be told you are perfect without seeking to improve

Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted

Can a man go farther than his nature?

Cannot be any goodness unless it is a practiced goodness

Canvassing means intimidation or corruption

Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing

Capricious potentate whom they worship

Careful not to smell of his office

Carry explosives and must particularly guard against sparks

Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask

Causes him to be popularly weighed

Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies

Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene

Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists

Charitable mercifulness; better than sentimental ointment

Charity that supplied the place of justice was not thanked

Chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness

Cheerful martyr

Childish faith in the beneficence of the unseen Powers who feed us

Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly

Circumstances may combine to make a whisper as deadly as a blow

Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine

Claim for equality puts an end to the priceless privileges

Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession

Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset

Cold curiosity

Cold charity to all

Come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything

Comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity

Command of countenance the Countess possessed

Commencement of a speech proves that you have made the plunge

Common voice of praise in the mouths of his creditors

Common sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation

Compared the governing of the Irish to the management of a horse

Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered

Compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement

Complacent languor of the wise youth

Compliment of being outwitted by their own offspring

Compromise is virtual death

Conduct is never a straight index where the heart's involved

Confess no more than is necessary, but do everything you can

Confident serenity inspired by evil prognostications

Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent

Consent to take life as it is

Consent of circumstances

Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath

Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure

Constitutionally discontented

Consult the family means--waste your time

Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war

Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther

Continued trust in the man--is the alternative of despair

Convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury

Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies

Convictions are generally first impressions

Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity

Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving

Could we--we might be friends

Could peruse platitudes upon that theme with enthusiasm

Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career

Could the best of men be simply--a woman's friend?

Could have designed this gabbler for the mate

Could affect me then, without being flung at me

Country can go on very well without so much speech-making

Country enclosed us to make us feel snug in our own importance

Country prizing ornaments higher than qualities

Courage to grapple with his pride and open his heart was wanting

Cover of action as an escape from perplexity

Cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men

Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history)

Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change

Critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear

Critical in their first glance at a prima donna

Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite

Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen

Dahlia, the perplexity to her sister's heart, lay stretched....

Damsel who has lost the third volume of an exciting novel

Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass

Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction

Days when you lay on your back and the sky rained apples

Dead Britons are all Britons, but live Britons are not quite brothers

Death is always next door

Death within which welcomed a death without

Death is only the other side of the ditch

Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes

Debit was eloquent, he was unanswerable

Decency's a dirty petticoat in the Garden of Innocence

Decent insincerity

Decline to practise hypocrisy

Dedicated to the putrid of the upper circle

Deeds only are the title

Deep as a mother's, pure as a virgin's, fiery as a saint's

Defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends

Delay in thine undertaking Is disaster of thy own making

Depending for dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal

Depreciating it after the fashion of chartered hypocrites.

Desire of it destroyed it

Despises hostile elements and goes unpunished

Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance

Determine that the future is in our debt, and draw on it

Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough

Detested titles, invented by the English

Developing stiff, solid, unobtrusive men, and very personable women

Dialectical stiffness

Dialogue between Nature and Circumstance

Did not know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed

Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings

Dignitary, and he passed under the bondage of that position

Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man

Discover the writers in a day when all are writing!

Discreet play with her eyelids in our encounters

Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices

Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur

Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable

Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked

Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war

Dithyrambic inebriety of narration

Divided lovers in presence

Do I serve my hand? or, Do I serve my heart?

Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men?

Dogmatic arrogance of a just but ignorant man

Dogs die more decently than we men

Dogs' eyes have such a sick look of love

Dose he had taken was not of the sweetest

Drank to show his disdain of its powers

Dreaded as a scourge, hailed as a refreshment (Scandal-sheet)

Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage

Drink is their death's river, rolling them on helpless

Dudley was not gifted to read behind words and looks

Earl of Cressett fell from his coach-box in a fit

Eating, like scratching, only wants a beginning

Eccentric behaviour in trifles

Effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative

Efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful

Elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors

Embarrassments of an uncongenial employment

Emilia alone of the party was as a blot to her

Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker

Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women

Empty stomachs are foul counsellors

Empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him

Enamoured young men have these notions

Enemy's laugh is a bugle blown in the night

Energy to something, that was not to be had in a market

England's the foremost country of the globe

English antipathy to babblers

English maids are domesticated savage animals

Enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness

Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism

Enthusiasm has the privilege of not knowing monotony

Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring

Envy of the man of positive knowledge

Equally acceptable salted when it cannot be had fresh

Everlastingly in this life the better pays for the worse

Every failure is a step advanced

Every woman that's married isn't in love with her husband

Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal

Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach

Exceeding variety and quantity of things money can buy

Excellent is pride; but oh! be sure of its foundations

Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality

Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony

Expectations dupe us, not trust

Explaining of things to a dull head

Externally soft and polished, internally hard and relentless

Exuberant anticipatory trustfulness

Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture

Eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are

Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon

Failures oft are but advising friends

Faith works miracles. At least it allows time for them

Fantastical

Far higher quality is the will that can subdue itself to wait

Fast growing to be an eccentric by profession

Fatal habit of superiority stopped his tongue

Father and she were aware of one another without conversing

Father used to say, four hours for a man, six for a woman

Favour can't help coming by rotation

Fear nought so much as Fear itself

Feel no shame that I do not feel!

Feel they are not up to the people they are mixing with

Feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being

Feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable

Fell to chatting upon the nothings agreeably and seriously

Feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness

Feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted

Festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers

Few feelings are single on this globe

Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends

Fiddle harmonics on the sensual strings

Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted

Fine Shades were still too dominant at Brookfield

Finishing touches to the negligence

Fire smoothes the creases

Fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody

Fit of Republicanism in the nursery

Flashes bits of speech that catch men in their unguarded corner

Flung him, pitied him, and passed on

Foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea

Foe can spoil my face; he beats me if he spoils my temper

Foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment

Fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl

Foolish trick of thinking for herself

For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too

Forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it

Forgetfulness is like a closing sea

Fortitude leaned so much upon the irony

Forty seconds too fast, as if it were a capital offence

Found by the side of the bed, inanimate, and pale as a sister of death

Found it difficult to forgive her his own folly

Found that he 'cursed better upon water'

Fourth of the Georges

Frankness as an armour over wariness

Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant

Friend he would not shake off, but could not well link with

Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two

From head to foot nothing better than a moan made visible

Frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged

Full-o'-Beer's a hasty chap

Fun, at any cost, is the one object worth a shot

Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?"

Generally he noticed nothing

Gentlefolks like straight-forwardness in their inferiors

Gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little

Gentleman in a good state of preservation

Get back what we give

Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant Duplicity

Give our courage as hostage for the fulfilment of what we hope

Give our consciences to the keeping of the parsons

Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea

Glimpse of her whole life in the horrid tomb of his embrace

Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble

Good and evil work together in this world

Good nature, and means no more harm than he can help

Good nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted

Good-bye to sorrow for a while--Keep your tears for the living

Good maxim for the wrathful--speak not at all

Good jokes are not always good policy

Goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character

Gossip always has some solid foundation, however small

Government of brain; not sufficient Insurrection of heart

Gradations appear to be unknown to you

Graduated naturally enough the finer stages of self-deception

Grand air of pitying sadness

Gratitude never was a woman's gift

Gratuitous insult

Gravely reproaching the tobacconist for the growing costliness of cigars

Greater our successes, the greater the slaves we become

Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman

Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth

Grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose

Grossly unlike in likeness (portraits)

Habit had legalized his union with her

Habit of antedating his sagacity

Habit, what a sacred and admirable thing it is

Had got the trick of lying, through fear of telling the truth

Had come to be her lover through being her husband

Had Shakespeare's grandmother three Christian names?

Had taken refuge in their opera-glasses

Half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole

Half a dozen dozen left