Thyrza

“He had heard but one of Walter's lectures, yet that was enough to realise for him the kind of thing which henceforth he disliked and distrusted. Egremont, it seemed to him, had sought to make working men priggish and effeminate, whereas what they wanted was back-bone and consciousness of the bard facts of life.””

— George Gissing

“To his mind there was something unnatural in a union between Egremont and Thyrza; try as he would, he could not realise it as having come to pass. The two were parted by so vast a social distinction, and, let Nature say what it will, the artificialities of life are wont to prevail.””

— George Gissing

“What is his line?’ ‘Ah, that’s the question! Very likely he hasn’t one at all. It seems to me there’s a good many young fellows in that case nowadays. They have education, they have money, and they don’t know what the deuce to do with either one or the other. They’re a cut above you, Mr. Jack; it isn’t enough for them to live and enjoy themselves. So they get it into their heads that they’re called upon to reform the world”

— George Gissing

“Lyddy,’ she added in a whisper, ‘it makes you so cruel to other people when you love anyone.””

— George Gissing

“Exquisite as an artistic product of Society, she affected the imagination not so much by her personal charm as through the perfume of luxury which breathed about her. Egremont, with his radical tendencies of thought, found himself marvelling as he regarded her; what a life was hers! Compare it with that of some little work-girl in Lambeth, such as he saw in the street”

— George Gissing

“Egremont’s an amateur, a dilettante. In many ways he’s worth a hundred of Dalmaine, but Dalmaine will benefit the world, and it’s well if Egremont doesn’t do harm.””

— George Gissing

“Why, who are the real social reformers? The men who don’t care a scrap for the people, but take up ideas because they can make capital out of them. It isn’t idealists who do the work of the world, but the hard-headed, practical, selfish men. A big employer of labour ‘ll do more good in a day, just because he sees profit’ll come of it, than all the mooning philanthropists in a hundred years.””

— George Gissing

“Just before them, on the ice, a little troop of ducks was going by, fowl dispossessed of their wonted swimming-ground by the all-hardening frost. Of every two steps the waddlers took, one was a hopeless slip, and the spectacle presented by the unhappy birds in their effort to get along at a good round pace was ludicrous beyond resistance. They sprawled and fell, they staggered up again with indignant wagging of head and tail, they rushed forward only to slip more desperately; now one leg failed them, now the other, now both at once. And all the time they kept up a cackle of annoyance; they looked about them with foolish eyes of amazement and indignation; they wondered, doubtless, what the world was coming to, when an honest duck’s piece of water was suddenly stolen from him, and he was subjected to insult on the top of injury.””

— George Gissing