Mosses from an Old ManseHoughton, Mifflin Company, 1882 - 559 pages |
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Adam Adam and Eve amid Aminadab Annie appeared Aylmer Beatrice beautiful behold beneath blaze bosom breast breath Bullfrog Celestial character cloud companion countenance cried dark death deep Dorcas dream earth earthly Elliston evil exclaimed eyes face faith fancy father Feathertop felt figure fire flame flowers forest garden gaze Georgiana Giovanni glance gleam glow Goodman Brown guest Hall of Fantasy hand head heart heaven human idea imagination lady leaves light living looked looking-glass Lord Byron man's mankind mind Monsieur du Miroir moral Mother Rigby mountain mystery nature never observed Old Manse once Owen Warland passed perhaps pipe poor Rappaccini RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER replied Reuben rich Roderick scarecrow seemed shadow shrub smile soul spirit stood strange sunshine thee thing thou thought tion trees truth Vanity Fair virtuoso voice wandering whole window withered woman words wrought young young Goodman Brown youth
Popular passages
Page 61 - Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach.
Page 117 - ... at least, unless they take sounder views of the healing art than those adopted by Rappaccini. It is his theory that all medicinal virtues • are comprised within those substances which we term vegetable poisons. These he cultivates with his own hands, and is said even to have produced new varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious than Nature, without the assistance of this learned person, would ever have plagued the world withal.
Page 50 - The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death...
Page 133 - ... frightful peculiarity in her physical and moral system were now either forgotten or by the subtle sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment, rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of such a change, it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half ideas which throng the dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect consciousness.
Page 54 - The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside, in unwilling recognition of the truth, against which all seekers sooner or later stumble, that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us indeed to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make.
Page 99 - as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness. The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through the air. and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld...
Page 102 - ... wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above the impious assembly.
Page 32 - The current lingers along so gently that the mere force of the boatman's will seems sufficient to propel his craft against it. It comes flowing softly through the midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet; while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course and dreams of the sky and of the clustering foliage...
Page 15 - Thus we see, too, in the world that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results — the fragrance of celestial flowers — to the daily life of others.
Page 115 - The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he said to himself, as a symbolic language to keep him in communion with Nature.