Attack his fleas—though he was supposedto have noneDogs: with rudiments of altruism and a senseof GodDon't hurt others more than is absolutelynecessaryEarly morning does not mince wordsEra which had canonised hypocrisyForgiven me; but she could never forgetHealth—He did not want it at such costIs anything more pathetic than the faithof the young?Law takes a low view of human natureLet her come to me as she will, when she will,not at all if she will notLove has no age, no limit; and no deathNever to see yourself as others see youOld men learn to forego their whimsPeople who don't live are wonderfullypreservedPerching-place; never—never her cage!Putting up a brave show of being naturalSocialists: they want our goodsThank you for that good lieTo seem to be respectable was to beYou have to buy experience
COURAGE
COURAGE Is but a word, and yet, of words,The only sentinel of permanence;The ruddy watch-fire of cold winter days,We steal its comfort, lift our weary swords,And on. For faith—without it—has no sense;And love to wind of doubt and tremor sways;And life for ever quaking marsh must tread.Laws give it not; before it prayer will blush;Hope has it not; nor pride of being true;'Tis the mysterious soul which never yields,But hales us on and on to breast the rushOf all the fortunes we shall happen through.And when Death calls across his shadowy fields—Dying, it answers: "Here! I am not dead!"
SOME FAVORITE PASSAGES
The simple truth, which underlies the whole story, thatwhere sex attraction is utterly and definitely lacking inone partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, orduty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit inNature.The tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollabletragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick enoughskin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact. Not evenFleur loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved. But inpitying Soames, readers incline, perhaps, to animus againstIrene: After all, they think, he wasn't a bad fellow, itwasn't his fault; she ought to have forgiven him, and so on!"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better sayingif the Past ever died. The persistence of the Past is oneof those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies,coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to aperfect novelty.The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly haveobserved, present, except through the senses of othercharacters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impingingon a possessive world.She turned back into the drawing-room; but in a minute cameout, and stood as if listening. Then she came stealing upthe stairs, with a kitten in her arms. He could see herface bent over the little beast, which was purring againsther neck. Why couldn't she look at him like that?But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims ofFreedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions ofthe Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge ofembalming the upper-middle class.When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsyteswe
