Z.’s Reviews > Felix Holt: The Radical > Status Update

“But—if [what Esther wanted] was to be had at all—it was not to be had without paying a heavy price for it, such as we must pay for all that is greatly good. . . . It is not true that love makes all things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult.”

"And while public opinion is what it is—while men have no better beliefs about public duty—while corruption is not felt to be a damning disgrace—while men are not ashamed in Parliament and out of it to make public questions which concern the welfare of millions a mere screen for their own petty private ends,—I say, no fresh scheme of voting will much mend our condition."

“But I don’t think myself a fine fellow because I’m melancholy. I don’t measure my force by the negations within me, and think my soul must be a mighty one because it is more given to idle suffering than to beneficent activity.”

“Did he want her to be heroic? That seemed impossible without some great occasion. Her life was a heap of fragments, and so were her thoughts: some great energy was needed to bind them together.”

“Felix felt himself in danger of getting into a rage. There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.”

"Every sentence was as pleasant to her as if it had been cut in her bared arm. Some men's kindness and love-making are more exasperating, more humiliating than others' derision . . ."

"These social changes in Treby parish are comparatively public matters, and this history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a few men and women; but there is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare."