Silas Marner

Warning: Possible boringness ahead. This is a post mostly made up of quotes from a book I read. I normally type and print quotes from books that I like and put them in a folder, but today I thought I might as well record them in my blog (for my satisfaction, not necessarily for your enjoyment). So. . .

I finished reading Silas Marner by George Eliot today. It was a beautiful book. If I had the ambition and time I'd write a book report on it. I enjoyed finding that many small passages of the book addressed issues that I still think about today - for instance, if we could manage to keep all the food people throw away, we'd be able to feed the hungry; and, there's no point in buying new clothes for kids when they're going to grow so fast anyway; and, even when we're told that a child needs to be disciplined a certain way, when we try it, it just doesn't sit right in our hearts. Anyway, it was a sweet story. Here are some quotes:

"A little child knows nothing of parental love, but only knows one face and one lap towards which it stretches its arms for refuge and nurture."

* * * *

Dolly has brought some bread she made to Silas after his life-savings of gold has been stolen: "There's letters pricked on 'em," said Dolly. "I can't read 'em myself, and there's nobody rightly knows what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at church. . . Well, whativer the letters are, they've a good meaning . . . for if there's any good, we've need of it i' this world."

* * * *

"Silas Marner sat lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep - only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky - before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway."

* * * *

"Unlike the gold which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in close-locked solitude - which was hidden away from the daylight, was deaf to the song of birds, and started to no human tones, - Eppie was a creature of endless claims and ever-growing desires, seeking and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living movements; making trial of everything, with trust in new joy. . . The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit."

* * * *

This quote reminded me of the questions that Joseph Smith had as a boy. Silas had come to a new town many years ago. In this conversation he's trying to describe to a neighbor woman how, in his old town, they'd drawn lots to determine who was guilty. She says: "And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o' that, Master Marner - the Bible as you brought wi' you from that country - it's the same as what they've got at church, and what Eppie's a-learning to read in?" "Yes," said Silas, "every bit the same."

* * * *

"Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings."

* * * *

"Life never can be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dulness of the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction, seated musingly on a childess hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose return is greeted by young voices - seated at the meal where the little heads rise one above another like nursery plants, it sees a black care hovering behind every one of them, and thinks the impluses by which men abandon freedom, and seek for ties, are surely nothing but a brief madness."

* * * *

Good night!