Augustine St. Clare Quotes

“Men do get tired, naturally, of a complaining wife. But I’ve kept things to myself, and borne, and borne, till St. Clare has got in the way of thinking I can bear anything.”

“Too much trouble,—laziness, cousin, laziness,—which ruins more souls than you can shake a stick at.”

“Well, now, cousin, you’ve given us a good talk and done your duty; on the whole, I think the better of you for it. I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn’t exactly appreciated, at first.”

“You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.”

“If I answer that question, I know you’ll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I’m not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.”

“It’s pretty generally understood that men don’t aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.”

“Get up, Tom. I’m not worth crying over.”

“My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,—debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking,—put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—for that’s the case with the largest half of mankind.”

“Now, an aristocrat, you know, the world over, has no human sympathies, beyond a certain line in society.”

“Any man who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I’d buy the dog, and work him, with a clear conscience!”

“The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that I hated— the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this ignorance, brutality and vice,—just to make money for me!”