Stoney’s Reviews > Falkner: > Status Update

“Oh, who would rule by power, when so much more absolute a tyranny is established through love!”

“Sympathy is more of a deceiver than conscience. The stander-by may dilate on the force of passion and the power of temptation, but the guilty are not cheated by such subterfuges; he knows that the still voice within was articulate to him. He remembers that at the moment of action he felt his arm checked, his ear warned; he could have stopped, and been innocent.”

“There are periods in our lives when we seem to run away from ourselves and our afflictions; to commence a new course of existence, upon fresh ground, towards a happier goal. Sometimes, on the contrary, the stream of life doubles—runs back to old scenes, and we are constrained to linger amid the desolation we had hoped to leave far behind.”

“In former days mortals wasted rather life than feeling, and every blow was a physical one; now the heart dies, though the body lives—and a miserable existence is dragged out, after hope and joy have ceased to adorn it.”

She really loves putting people in the most wretched situations huh