The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni

Forsideomslag
Houghton Mifflin, & Company, 1901
 

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Side 473 - Sin has educated Donatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then — which we deem such a dreadful blackness in the universe — is it, like sorrow, merely an element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than we could otherwise have attained ? Did Adam fall, that we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his...
Side 474 - This is terrible ; and I could weep for you, if you indeed believe it. Do not you perceive what a mockery your creed makes, not only of all religious sentiments, but of moral law ? and how it annuls and obliterates whatever precepts of Heaven are written deepest within us ? You have shocked me beyond words...
Side 13 - He meant it for that one congenial friend, — more comprehensive of his purposes, more appreciative of his success, more indulgent of his short-comings, and, in all respects, closer and kinder than a brother, — that all-sympathizing critic, in short, whom an author never actually meets, but to whom he implicitly makes his appeal whenever he is conscious of having done his best. The antique fashion of Prefaces recognized this genial personage as the " Kind Reader," the "Gentle Reader," the " Beloved,
Side 320 - All towns should be made capable of purification by fire, or of decay within each half-century. Otherwise, they become the hereditary haunts of vermin and noisomeness, besides standing apart from the possibility of such improvements as are constantly introduced into the rest of man's contrivances and accommodations. It is beautiful, no doubt, and exceedingly satisfactory to some of our natural instincts, to imagine...
Side xv - No one has had just that vision of life, and no one has had a literary form that more successfully expressed his vision. He was not a moralist, and he was not simply a poet. The moralists are weightier, denser, richer, in a sense; the poets are more purely inconclusive and irresponsible. He combined in a singular degree the spontaneity of the imagination with a haunting care for moral problems.
Side 470 - ... it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice, do not disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dusty artificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gewgaws, hanging at the saintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious marble on the walls ; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions, showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here ; the...
Side 77 - ... profane hand, she seemed to possess the faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory. The copy would come from her hands with what the beholder felt must be the light which the old master had left upon the original in bestowing his final and most ethereal touch. In some instances even (at least, so those believed who best appreciated Hilda's power and sensibility) she had been enabled to execute what the great master had conceived in his imagination, but had not so perfectly succeeded in putting...
Side 188 - The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere. The firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm. A footstep, a little heavier than ordinary, will serve ; and we must step very daintily, not to break through the crust at any moment. By and by, we inevitably sink...
Side 57 - We artists purposely exclude sunshine, and all but a partial light," said Miriam, " because we think it necessary to put ourselves at odds with Nature before trying to imitate her. That strikes you very strangely, does it not ? But we make very pretty pictures sometimes with our artfully arranged lights and shadows. Amuse yourself with some of mine, Donatello, and by and by I shall be in the mood to begin the portrait we were talking about.
Side 16 - And, again, while reproducing the book, on the broad and dreary sands of Redcar, with the gray German Ocean tumbling in upon me, and the northern blast always howling in my ears...

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