The Adventures of Caleb Williams: Or, Things as They are

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Baudry's European Library, 1832 - 438 pages
 

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Page 121 - The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
Page 90 - State, and each and every of them who shall at any time hereafter be found in any part of this State, shall be and are hereby adjudged and declared guilty of felony, and shall suffer death as in cases of felony without benefit of clergy.
Page 157 - O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung ; My ears with hollow murmurs rung. In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd ; My blood with gentle horrors thrill'd ; My feeble pulse forgot to play ; I fainted, sunk, and died away.
Page xxiv - It was infinitely the best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in which my imagination revelled the most freely, was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording the gradually accumulating impulses, which led the personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of proceeding in which they afterwards embarked.
Page 424 - I began these memoirs with the idea of vindicating my character. I have now no character that I wish to vindicate : but I will finish them that thy story may be fully understood ; and that, if those errors of thy life be known, which thou so ardently desiredst to conceal, the world may at least not hear and repeat a luilt.told and mangled tale.
Page 422 - Williams, said he, you have conquered ! I see too late the greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it is to my fault and not yours, that it is to the excess of jealousy that was ever burning in my bosom, that I owe my ruin. I could have resisted any plan of malicious accusation you might have brought against me. But I see that the artless and manly story you have told, has carried conviction to every hearer.
Page 328 - I shrunk from the vigilance of every human eye. I dared not open my heart to the best affections of our nature. I was shut up, a deserted, solitary wretch, in the midst of my species. I dared not look for the consolations of friendship ; but, instead of seeking to identify myself with the joys and sorrows of others, and exchanging the delicious gifts of confidence and sympathy, was compelled to centre my thoughts and my vigilance in myself. My life was all a lie.
Page 408 - Tyrants have trembled, surrounded with whole armies of their Janissaries! What should make thee inaccessible to my fury ?• No, I will use no daggers ! I will unfold a tale ! — I will show thee to the world for what thou art ; and all the men that live, shall confess my truth...
Page 420 - I now see that mistake in all its enormity. I am sure that if I had opened my heart to Mr. Falkland, if I had told to him privately the tale that I have now been telling, he could not have resisted my reasonable demand.
Page 122 - He was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of chi.valry ever to forget the situation, humiliating and dishonourable according to his ideas, in which he had been placed upon this occasion. There is a mysterious sort of divinity annexed to the person of a true knight, that makes any species of brute violence committed upon it indelible and immortal. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged along the floor ! Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not to be endured!

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