"... I listened dreamily to the monologues of future experiment and discovery. I mingled them confusedly in my thought with glimpses of blue water and delicate floating cloud, with the notes of birds and the distant glitter of the glacier." (The Lifted Veil, 10)

"Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear" (Silas Marner)

"As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear voice and distinct utterance, a faint suggestion of weariness struggling with habitual patience. .... At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity and affection" (Romola, 95)

"The faces now just met, and the dark curls mingled for an instant with the rippling gold. Quick as lightning after that, Tito set his foot on a projecting ledge of the book-shelves and reached down the needful volumes. They were both contented to be silent and separate, for that first blissful experience of mutual consciousness was all the more exquisite for being unperturbed by immediate sensation. ... It had all been as rapid as the irreversible mingling of waters" (Romola, 173)

"There were men, women, and children in the groups, and there was no want of lively colour to flutter in the gentle evening wind. The mingling of various voices and the sound of laughter made a cheerful impression upon the ear, analogous to that of the fluttering colours upon the eye. Into the sheet of water reflecting the flushed sky in the foreground of the living picture, a knot of urchins were casting stones, and watching the expansion of the rippling circles. So, in the rosy evening, one might watch the ever-widening beauty of the landscape - beyond the newly-released workers wending home" (Our Mutual Friend, 756-57)

[Utopian woman,] "respected as a child-bearer and rearer of children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the future of her children, has far more instinct for maternity than the poor drudge and mother of drudges of past days [Victorian women] could ever have had, or than her sister of the upper classes, brought up in affected ignorance of natural facts, reared in an atmosphere of mingled prudery and prurience." (News From Nowhere, 96)

"So we shook hands and turned our backs on the Obstinate Refusers, went down the slope to our boat, and before we had gone many steps heard the full tune of tinkling trowels mingle with the humming of the bees and the singing of the larks above the little plain of Basildon." (News From Nowhere,198)

"As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear voice and distinct utterance, a faint suggestion of weariness struggling with habitual patience. .... At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity and affection" (Romola, 95)

"He had his old trick of artless repetition, his helpless iteration of the obvious; but he was sensibly different for Fleda, if only by the difference of his clear face mottled over and almost disfigured by little points of pain." (Spoils of Poynton, 58)

"a muddle-headed and credulous set, who, because they themselves were wall-eyed, supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook" (Silas Marner, 73)

"a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as though with diluted blood" (Our Mutual Friend)

"I bowed before the storm, and mumbled out some excuse or other. I must say, I might have known that people who were so fond of architecture generally, would not be backward in ornamenting themselves; all the more as the shape of their raiment, apart from its colour, was both beautiful and reasonable - veiling the form, without either muffling or caricaturing it." (News From Nowhere,165)

"Fleda Vetch, whom from the earliest hour no illusion had brushed with its wing, now held her breath, went on tiptoe, wandered in outlying parts of the house and through delicate muffled rooms" (Spoils of Poynton, 26)

"I bowed before the storm, and mumbled out some excuse or other. I must say, I might have known that people who were so fond of architecture generally, would not be backward in ornamenting themselves; all the more as the shape of their raiment, apart from its colour, was both beautiful and reasonable - veiling the form, without either muffling or caricaturing it." (News From Nowhere,165)

"Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!
Ah, glimmering water,
Fiful earth-murmur,
Dreaming woods!
Ah, golden-haird strangely smiling Goddess,
And though, proved, much enduring,
Wave-tossed Wanderer!
Who can stand still?
Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me-
The cup again!" (Matthew Arnold, "The Strayed Reveller")

"Mrs. Veneering; never saw such velvet, say two thousand pounds as she stands, absolute jewellers' window, father must have been a pawnbroker, or how could these people do it? Attendant unknowns: pokey." (Our Mutural Friend, 165)

"A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect. The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national dread of colour has an air of mourning. the towers and steeples of the many house-encompassed churches, dark and dingy as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom; ... melancholy waifs ... melancholy waifs ... melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping and poking for anything to sell" (Our Mutual Friend, 450)

"Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position." (Silas Marner, 71)

"'There has been no great people without processions, and the man who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to anything but contempt, is like the puddle that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed by.'" (Romola, 141)

"a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being" (Silas Marner, 19)

"Yet Romola's life seemed an image of that loving, pitying devotednes, that patient endurance of irksome tasks, from which he had shrunk and excused himself. But he was not out of love with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice: he was in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for all charm and loveliness; he had still a healthy appetite for ordinary human joys." (Romola, 170)

"As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear voice and distinct utterance, a faint suggestion of weariness struggling with habitual patience. .... At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity and affection" (Romola, 95)

"Then, the train rattled among the house-tops, and among the ragged sides of houses torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes top his. (Our Mutual Friend, 821-22)

[Death of Jenny Wren's father] "Force of police arriving, he recognized in them the conspirators, and laid about him hoarsely, fiercely, staringly, convulsively, foamingly. A humble machine, familiar to the conspirators and called by the expressive name of Stretcher, being unavoidably sent for, he was rendered a harmless bundle of torn rags by being strapped down upon it, with voice and consciousness gone out of him and life fast going." (Our Mutual Friend, 800)

"She would have to give up Poynton, and give it up to a product of Waterbath - that was the wrong that rankled, the humiliation at which one would be able adequately to shudder only when one should know the place." (Spoils of Poynton, 9)

"this little stall of SW's was the hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in London. It gave you the face-ache o look at his apples, the stomach-ache... the tooth-ache... Whether from too much east wind or no - it was an easterly corner - the stall, the stock and the keeper, were all as dry as the Desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a close-grained, with a face carved out of very hard material that had just as much play of expression as a watchman's rattle sprung. Sooth to say, he was so wooden a man that he seemed to to have taken his wooden leg naturally..." (Our Mutual Friend, 89)

"Then, the train rattled among the house-tops, and among the ragged sides of houses torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes top his. (Our Mutual Friend, 821-22)

"A neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing over [his face] were dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte and had no fancies" (Our Mutual Friend, 47)

"The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream and all tending one way with a strong current. As the ripple under the moon broke unexpectedly now and then, and palely flashed in a new shape and with a new sound, so parts of his thoughts started, unbidden, from the rest, and revealed their wickedness." (Our Mutual Friend, 766)

"There were men, women, and children in the groups, and there was no want of lively colour to flutter in the gentle evening wind. The mingling of various voices and the sound of laughter made a cheerful impression upon the ear, analogous to that of the fluttering colours upon the eye. Into the sheet of water reflecting the flushed sky in the foreground of the living picture, a knot of urchins were casting stones, and watching the expansion of the rippling circles. So, in the rosy evening, one might watch the ever-widening beauty of the landscape - beyond the newly-released workers wending home" (Our Mutual Friend, 756-57)

[Romola] "The only spot of bright colour in the room was made by the hair of a tall maiden of seventeen or eighteen, who was standing before a carved leggio, or reading-desk, such as often seen in the choirs of Italian churches. The hair was of a reddish gold colour, enriched by an unbroken small ripple, such as may be seen in the sunset clouds on grandest autumnal evenings." (Romola, 93)

"The faces now just met, and the dark curls mingled for an instant with the rippling gold. Quick as lightning after that, Tito set his foot on a projecting ledge of the book-shelves and reached down the needful volumes. They were both contented to be silent and separate, for that first blissful experience of mutual consciousness was all the more exquisite for being unperturbed by immediate sensation. ... It had all been as rapid as the irreversible mingling of waters" (Romola, 173)

"There was a rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where the sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the obscurity of the night. ... The fire was in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the hearth" (Our Mutual Friend, 63)

"a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as though with diluted blood" (Our Mutual Friend)

"And everything so vaunted the spoiling influences of water - discoloured copper, rotten wood, honey-combed stone, green dank deposit - that the after-consequences of being crushed, sucked under, and drawn down, looked as ugly to the imagination as the main event" (Our Mutual Friend, 219)

"The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to think very prosaic figures- men whose only work was to ride round their land, getting heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who passed the rest of their days in the half-listless gratification of senses dulled by monotony..." (Silas Marner, 29)

"The white-washed walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered with a subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at once occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a long-accustomed manner..." (Silas Marner, 14)

[Jenny Wren] "'And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses, till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand - so - and expect to make them rustle. I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was among.'" (Our Mutual Friend, 289)

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet our of hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she heard the tender river whispering to many like herself, 'come to me, come to me! .... My breast is softer than the pauper-nuse's; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the pauper-wards. (Our Mutual Friend, 567)

"Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank freely, and accepted gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families" (Silas Marner, 21)

"O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium to cry out, night and day, 'Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us'!" (Our Mutual Friend, 160)

"The brilliant illumination within seemed to press upon his eyes with palpable force after the pale scattered lights and broad shadows of the piazza ... and the uninterrupted chant from the choir was repose to the ear after the hellish hubbub of the crowd outside. .... The whole area of the great church was filled with peasant-women, some kneeling, some standing; the coarse bronzed skins, and the dingy clothing of the rougher dwellers on the mountains, contrasting with the softer-lined faces and the white or red head-drapery of the well-to-do dwellers in the valley ... And spreading high and far over the walls and ceiling there was another multitude, also pressing close against each other, that they might be nearer the potent Virgin. It was the crowd of votive waxen images .... It was a perfect resurrection-swarm of remote mortals and fragments of mortals, reflecting, in their varying degrees of freshness, the sombre dinginess and sprinkled brightness of the crowd below." (Romola, 200)

"And therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty..." (Ruskin, "Nature of Gothic")

"The shimmer of wrought substances pent itself in the brightness; the old golds and brasses, old ivories and bronzes, the fresh old tapestries and deep old damasks thew out a radiance in which the poor woman saw in solution all her old loves and patiences, all her old tricks and triumphs." (Spoils of Poynton, 38)

[Sloppy] "shining and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at the knees" (Our Mutual Friend, 391)

"Fleda, dismayed, could see the thing - something glazed and piped, on iron pillars, with untidy plants and cane sofas; a shiny excrescence on the noble face of Poynton." (Spoils of Poynton, 22)

"They were all shivering, and everything about them seemed to be shivering; the river itself, craft, rigging, sails, such early smoke as there yet was on the shore. Black with wet, and altered to the eye by white patches of hail and sleet, the huddled buildings looked lower than usual, as if they were cowering, and had shrunk with the cold. Very little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and doors were shut..." (Our Mutual Friend, 219)

"It has been like plumping into cold water. I saw the only thing was to do it, not to stand shivering." (Spoils of Poynton, 41)

"I felt a shuddering impression that this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision." (The Lifted Veil, 34)

"Yet Romola's life seemed an image of that loving, pitying devotednes, that patient endurance of irksome tasks, from which he had shrunk and excused himself. But he was not out of love with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice: he was in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for all charm and loveliness; he had still a healthy appetite for ordinary human joys." (Romola, 170)

"I shuddered with horror as the scene recurred to me .... I trembled under her touch; I felt the witchery of her presence; I yearned to be assured of her love. The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst." (The Lifted Veil, 30)

"I venture to tell you that your buildings smack too much of Christian barbarism for my taste. I have a shuddering sense of what there is inside- hideous smoked Madonnas; fleshless saints in mosaic, staring down idiotic astonishment and rebuke from the apse; skin-clad skeletons hanging on crosses, or stuck all over with arrows, or stretched on gridirons; women and monks with heads aside in perpetual lamentation." (Romola, 77)

"She would have to give up Poynton, and give it up to a product of Waterbath - that was the wrong that rankled, the humiliation at which one would be able adequately to shudder only when one should know the place." (Spoils of Poynton, 9)

"Why should a sickly fanatic, worn with fasting, have looked at him in particular, and where in all his travels could he remember encountering that face before? Folly! such vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs, with tickling importunity - best to sweep them away at a dash "(Romola, 144)

"The worst horror was the acres of varnish, something advertised and smelly, with which everything was smeared" (Spoils of Poynton, 4)

"And therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty..." (Ruskin, "Nature of Gothic")

"If the conventional Cherub could ever grow up and be clothed, he might be photographed as a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, innocent appearance was a reason for his being always treated with condescension when he was not put down." (Our Mutual Friend, 75)

"her friend had taken her up with a smothered ferocity by which she was slightly disconcerted" (Spoils of Poynton, 10)

"She had the sense of being buried alive, smothered in the mere expansion of another will" (Spoils of Poynton, 143)

"While the heart beats, bruise it - it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; ...." (The Lifted Veil, 3)

"Mr Podsnap could tolerate taste in a mushroom man who stood in need of that sort of thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything said boastfully, 'Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce; wouldn't you like to melt me down?' A corpulent straddling epergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table." (Our Mutual Friend, 177)

"However, there was still the Thames sparkling under the sun, and near high water, as last night I had seen it gleaming under the moon." (News From Nowhere, 45)

"A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

"The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The Bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazoned baldric slung
A might silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott. (Tennyson, from "The Lady of Shalott")

"The brilliant illumination within seemed to press upon his eyes with palpable force after the pale scattered lights and broad shadows of the piazza ... and the uninterrupted chant from the choir was repose to the ear after the hellish hubbub of the crowd outside. .... The whole area of the great church was filled with peasant-women, some kneeling, some standing; the coarse bronzed skins, and the dingy clothing of the rougher dwellers on the mountains, contrasting with the softer-lined faces and the white or red head-drapery of the well-to-do dwellers in the valley ... And spreading high and far over the walls and ceiling there was another multitude, also pressing close against each other, that they might be nearer the potent Virgin. It was the crowd of votive waxen images .... It was a perfect resurrection-swarm of remote mortals and fragments of mortals, reflecting, in their varying degrees of freshness, the sombre dinginess and sprinkled brightness of the crowd below." (Romola, 200)

"All without looking she was sure the room was occupied by just such other objects, stuffed with as many as it could hold of the trophies of her friend's struggle. By this time the very fingers of her glove, resting on the seat of the sofa, had thrilled at the touch of an old velvet brocade, a wondrous texture she could recognise, would have recognised among a thousand..." (Spoils of Poynton, 47)

"Then, the train rattled among the house-tops, and among the ragged sides of houses torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes top his. (Our Mutual Friend, 821-22)

"The brilliant illumination within seemed to press upon his eyes with palpable force after the pale scattered lights and broad shadows of the piazza ... and the uninterrupted chant from the choir was repose to the ear after the hellish hubbub of the crowd outside. .... The whole area of the great church was filled with peasant-women, some kneeling, some standing; the coarse bronzed skins, and the dingy clothing of the rougher dwellers on the mountains, contrasting with the softer-lined faces and the white or red head-drapery of the well-to-do dwellers in the valley ... And spreading high and far over the walls and ceiling there was another multitude, also pressing close against each other, that they might be nearer the potent Virgin. It was the crowd of votive waxen images .... It was a perfect resurrection-swarm of remote mortals and fragments of mortals, reflecting, in their varying degrees of freshness, the sombre dinginess and sprinkled brightness of the crowd below." (Romola, 200)

"The tangle of life is much more intricate than you've ever, I think, felt it to be. You slash into it,' cried Fleda finely, 'with a great pair of shears; you nip at it as if you were one of the Fates!" (Spoils of Poynton,155)

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet our of hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she heard the tender river whispering to many like herself, 'come to me, come to me! .... My breast is softer than the pauper-nuse's; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the pauper-wards. (Our Mutual Friend, 567)

"He expiates on Mr Venus's patient habits and delicate manipulation; on his skill in piecing little things together; on his knowledge of various tissues and textures; on the likelihood of small indications leading him on to the discovery of great concealments." (Our Mutual Friend, 357)

"All without looking she was sure the room was occupied by just such other objects, stuffed with as many as it could hold of the trophies of her friend's struggle. By this time the very fingers of her glove, resting on the seat of the sofa, had thrilled at the touch of an old velvet brocade, a wondrous texture she could recognise, would have recognised among a thousand..." (Spoils of Poynton, 47)

"He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger's. Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows..." (Our Mutual Friend, 90)

"He clasped her, and she gave herself- she poured out her tears on his breast. Something prisoned and pent throbbed and gushed; something deep and sweet surged up - something that came from far within and far off" (Spoils of Poynton, 129)

"So we shook hands and turned our backs on the Obstinate Refusers, went down the slope to our boat, and before we had gone many steps heard the full tune of tinkling trowels mingle with the humming of the bees and the singing of the larks above the little plain of Basildon." (News From Nowhere,198)

"It came from a very bright place; and the little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped trailing behind it, and the queer little bonnet dangling at its back- toddled on to the open door of Silas Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where there was a bright fire of logs and sticks, which had thoroughly warmed the old sack .... squatted down on the sack, and spread its tiny hands towards the blaze, in perfect contentment, gurgling and making many inarticulate communications to the cheerful fire, like a new-hatched gosling beginning to find itself comfortable" (Silas Marner, 107)

[Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, a cosy pub] "long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water..." (Our Mutual Friend, 102)

"Now in the make and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labor, there are some powers for better things; some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought..." (Ruskin, "The Nature of Gothic")

"Now in the make and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labor, there are some powers for better things; some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought..." (Ruskin, "The Nature of Gothic")

"I shuddered with horror as the scene recurred to me .... I trembled under her touch; I felt the witchery of her presence; I yearned to be assured of her love. The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst." (The Lifted Veil, 30)

[Ruskin is referring to the history of gothic architecture] "the stony pillar grew slender and the vaulted roof grew light, till they had wreathed themselves into the semblance of he summer woods, at their fairest , and of the dead field-flowers, long trodden down in blood" (Ruskin, "The Nature of Gothic")

[Sloppy] "shining and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at the knees" (Our Mutual Friend, 391)

"The worst horror was the acres of varnish, something advertised and smelly, with which everything was smeared" (Spoils of Poynton, 4)

"... the rational talk, the graceful attentions, the wittily-turned phrases, and the kindly deeds, which used to make the web of their characters, were seen as if thrust asunder by a microscopic vision, that showed all the intermediate frivolities, all the suppressed egoism, all the struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague capricious memories, and indolent make-shift thoughts, from which human words and deeds emerge like leaflets covering a fermenting heap." (The Lifted Veil, 19-20)

"...doubts and fears, the unsatisfied yearnings, the exquisite tortures of sensitiveness, that had made the web of my life..." (The Lifted Veil, 37-38)

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet our of hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she heard the tender river whispering to many like herself, 'come to me, come to me! .... My breast is softer than the pauper-nuse's; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the pauper-wards. (Our Mutual Friend, 567)

"I felt a shuddering impression that this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision." (The Lifted Veil, 34)

"A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect. The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national dread of colour has an air of mourning. the towers and steeples of the many house-encompassed churches, dark and dingy as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom; ... melancholy waifs ... melancholy waifs ... melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping and poking for anything to sell" (Our Mutual Friend, 450)

"What, looked at closely, was the end of all life, but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own blooming life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but for others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the time of keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened into barren rigidity?" (Romola,167)

"...doubts and fears, the unsatisfied yearnings, the exquisite tortures of sensitiveness, that had made the web of my life..." (The Lifted Veil, 37-38)