Hard Times for These TimesB. Tauchnitz, 1854 - 376 pages |
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Hard Times for These Times: Vol. I. / Hard Times. and Reprinted Pieces, Volume 2 Charles Dickens No preview available - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
agen asked Bank believe better Bounderby of Coketown Bounderby's brother canna Childers compound a felony considered coom cried curtsey dark daughter door eyes face fact father fellow gentleman girl gone hand head hear heard heart hope horseriders horthe hour James Harthouse Josiah Bounderby Jupe Kidderminster knew lady light porter looked M'Choakumchild ma'am manner marriage married mean mind Miss Gradgrind morning muddle never nine oils old Bounderby old woman Pegler pity poor present pretty Rachael round seemed seen shaking Sissy sister Slackbridge Sleary Sparsit Stephen Blackpool Stone Lodge stood stopped street sure tears tell thee there's thing thith Thomas Gradgrind thou thought Thquire Tom Gradgrind took town turned voice wait walked wath whelp windlass window wonder word young
Popular passages
Page 6 - THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four^ and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.
Page 9 - ... he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white. 'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.
Page 70 - ... me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion ? And my remark was — for I couldn't think of a better one — that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong, too.
Page 6 - In this life, we want nothing but facts, sir; nothing but facts." The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present all backed a 111 tic, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
Page 100 - I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that 'tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want of aid. Thou knowest who said, ' Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her !' There have been plenty to do that.
Page 60 - ... Tom, I wonder" — upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, " Louisa, never wonder ! " Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder.
Page 7 - Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanising apparatus, too, charged with a grim, mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away. "Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely...
Page 343 - Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy and water: 'one, that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-interetht after all, but thomething very different; t'other, that it bath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith!
Page 8 - You mustn't tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?" " If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.
Page 133 - Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along...