I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.
I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.
And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.
A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.
The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possiblities as probabilities.
And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done– done, see you!– under that sky there, every day.
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
Mr Lorry asks the witness questions:Ever been kicked? Might have been.Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.
I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.
Some conjurers say that number three is the magic number, and some say number seven. It’s neither my friend, neither. It’s number one. (Fagin)
[She wasn’t] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.
There is a wisdom of the head, and… there is a wisdom of the heart.
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.
I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.
In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.
Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.
She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog,’ sir.
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by.
Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.
So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.
They ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.
I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you’re a bad set of fellows. Now mind!
He couldn’t be a doctor, or he would have a quieter and more persuasive manner.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.
I only hope, for the sake of the rising male sex generally, that you may be found in as vulnerable and soft-hearted a mood by the first eligible young fellow who appeals to your compassion.
…and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.
You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
There can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to expect
The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece ofspecious humbug designed to conceal it’s desire for economic control ofthe Southern states.
A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.
Company, you see – company is – is – it’s a very different thing from solitude – an’t it?
My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.
I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can offer,” said Mrs. Maylie; “I know that the devotion and affection of her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and lasting.
Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is always, the one which first presents itself to them.
Always the way!” muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homewards. “The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never lasts. Ha! ha!
Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.
The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him.
She led me to believe we will going fast because her thoughts were going fast.
It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.
Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of
There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.
It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young king that he was sorry for his father’s death;but, as common subjects have that virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it.
Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain
They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.
It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities that she has, and not by the qualities she may not have.
It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed at home.
[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can’t pay, gets another person who can’t pay, to guarantee that he can pay.
Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.
I must do something or I shall wear my heart away…
We went our several ways,” said Lady Dedlock, “and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.
There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest of his gender, and she was the loveliest of hers. They had nineteen children, and were always having more.
Old Barley might be as old as thee hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks’s Basin to fill it to overflowing.
. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .
You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.
Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.
It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.
My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.
. . . for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent’s love.
The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope.
The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy.
But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn’t read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.
They had an ugly look to one as prone to disgust and fear as the changes of a few hours had made me.
…I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
Ah me!” said he, “what might have been is not what is!
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect.
It is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon.
There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all interest in romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance.
When I went out, light of day seemed a darker color than when I went in.
I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable–indescribable–my misery amazing.
Oh, let us love our occupations,Bless the squire and his relations,Live upon our daily rations,And always know our proper stations.
In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is–as the light called human life is–at its coming and its going.
His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more.
My sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne; but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!
Oh, miss Haversham said I,there have been sore mistakes and my life has been a blind and thankless one, and I want forgiveness and direction far too much to be bitter with you.
One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.
For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.
There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.
Dickens writes that an event, “began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.
I have remembered Who wept for a parting between the living and the dead.
… Any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness!
Remember how strong we are in our happiness and how weak he is in his misery!
The air was filled with phantoms… and… the misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
Wish me everything that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as good as got it, John. I have better than got it, John.
Let us take heed how we laugh without reason, lest we cry with it.
He cross-examined his very wine when he had nothing else at hand.
He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely.
We must leave the discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, and Heaven’s pleasure.
To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible.
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.
When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become.
…and who must have had something real about her, or she could not have existed, but it certainly was not her hair, or her teeth, or her figure, or her complexion.
My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse.
He executed his commission with great promptitude and dispatch, only calling at one public-house for half a minute, and even that might be said to be in his way, for he went in at one door and came out at the other[.]
I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead.
We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners drop in, we know what to give ’em as will keep ’em away another time.
This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!
The great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what they don’t want; and then they get tired of coming.
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.
if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.
Whatsume’er the failings on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart.
I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything
He wouldn’t hear of anybody’s paying taxes, though he was very patriotic.
That I growed up a man and not a beast says something for me.
In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.
The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them
lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject.
He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.
I should be an affected women, if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son’s inspiring such emotions; but I can’t be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible on his merits
…lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, work round to the same.
On this matter I’m inclined to agree with the French, who gaze upon any personal dietary prohibition as bad manners.
We have had for breakfast, toasts, cakes, a yorkshire pie, a piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my portmanteau, tea, coffee, ham and eggs…
His high spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess.
The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.
It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.
It was an instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit’s worth and difference from all the rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for being simply what she was.
You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?””I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
. . .for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth
Calamity with us, is made an excuse for doing wrong. With them, it is erected into a reason for their doing right. This is really the justice of rich to poor, and I protest against it because it is so.
Weel, ma´am’ said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; ‘when I ha´finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there´s now to be done wi´out tryin -cept laying down and dying.
Are you thankful for not being young?”Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don’t you see?…
I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore – yes, I do well.
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.
When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come topeace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and findsuch a blessed sense of rest!
For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.
I found myself with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause.
they’re so fond of Liberty in this part of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to market with ’em. They’ve such a passion for Liberty, that they can’t help taking liberties with her.
My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.
The night was as dark by this time as it would be until morning; and what light we had, seemed to come from the river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars.
We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.
Apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.
I wished that I had some other guardian of minor abilities.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
For our path in life…is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times.
And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of sharing in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.
I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should.
He had no notion of meeting danger half-way. When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he troubled himself.
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good.
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused— in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened— by the recurrence of Christmas.
Our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!
And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at istelf and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never.
[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you!
Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.
The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.
I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.
There never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.
Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
…and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming?
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.
What the mud had been doing with itself, or where it came from, who could say? But it seemed to collect in a moment, as a crowd will, and in five minutes to have splashed all the sons and daughters of Adam.
To do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end to be attained will justify.
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
Spring is the time of the year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade
Get out of this office! I’ll have no feelings here.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing compared to self-swindlers.
The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will
Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.
I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respe
Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin.
There are strings in the human heart which must never be sounded by another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings in mine.
I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day.
He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him.~ Stephen speaking of Rachael
The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.
what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.
Dickens writes that one of his characters, “listened to everything without seeming to, which showed he understood his business.
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine.
I never heerd…nor read of nor see in picters, any angel in tights and gaiters…but…he’s a reg’lar thoroughbred angel for all that.
There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.
I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world.
It is a far far better thing that I do than anything I have ever done it is a far far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week if there is anything to be got by it.
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.
This is a world of action and not for moping and droning in.
‘Umble we are ‘umble we have been ‘umble we shall ever be.
If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.
“If the law supposes that ” said Mr. Bumble “the law is a ass a idiot.”
One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.
It’s over and can’t be helped and that’s one consolation as they always say in Turkey when they cut the wrong man’s head off.
Time is the greatest and longest-established spinner of all. … His factory is a secret place his work noiseless and his hands are mutes.
He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favour of two.
Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many-not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.
Secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster.
Minds like bodies will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
“It was as true ” said Mr. Barkis … “as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.”
“It was as true” said Mr. Barkus “as taxes is. And nothing is truer than them.”
I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.
The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused – in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened – by the recurrence of Christmas.
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship and pass the rosy wine.
The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.