Mary Augusta Ward

Mary Augusta Ward (née Arnold) (June 11, 1851 – March 26, 1920) was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs. Humphry Ward.

Quotes

Robert Elsmere (1888)

Robert Elsmere. London: Macmillan and Co., 1888

• "Propinquity does it"—as Mrs Thornburgh is always reminding us.
  • Book I. Ch. i, p. 7

• Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.
  • Book I, Ch. iii, pp. 33–34

• One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.
  • Book I, Ch. v, p. 65

• This Laodicean cant of tolerance.
  • Book II, Ch. xii, p. 165

• There is a tyrannical element in all fanaticism, an element which makes opposition a torment.
  • Book II, Ch. xii, p. 167

• Place before your eyes two precepts, and two only. One is, Preach the Gospel; and the other is—Put down enthusiasm! […] — the Church of England in a nutshell.
  • Book II, Ch. xvii, pp. 231–232

• Other trades may fail. The agitator is always sure of his market.
  • Book II, Ch. xvii, p. 233

• Conviction is the Conscience of the Mind.
  • Book IV, Ch. xxvi, p. 344

• All things change,—creeds and philosophies and outward systems,—but God remains!
  • Book IV. Ch. xxvii, p. 356

• Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!
  • Book IV. Ch. xxxviii, p. 365

• To reconceive the Christ! It is the special task of our age.
  • Book V, Ch. xl, p. 496

The History of David Grieve (1891)

The History of David Grieve. Toronto: The Copp, Clark Co., 1892

• There is nothing more startling in human relations than the strong emotions of weak people.
  • Book I, Ch. viii, p. 92

• Customers must be delicately angled for at a safe distance—show yourself too much, and, like trout, they flashed away.
  • Book II, Ch. iii, p. 153

• [M]y credo is very short. Its first article is art—and its second is art—and its third is art!
  • Book III, Ch. ii, p. 275

• We enjoy the great prophets of literature most when we have not yet lived enough to realise all they tell us.
  • Book III, Ch. xvi, p. 428

• [T]he better life cannot be imposed from without—it must grow from within.
  • Book IV, Ch. vii, p. 523

• Is there any other slavery and chain like that of temperament?
  • Book IV, Ch. x, pp. 555–556

A Writer's Recollections (1918)

A Writer's Recollections. London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1918

• A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject matter, when one comes to write about it.
  • Ch. I, p. 2

• [T]he delight in natural things—colours, forms, scents—when there was nothing to restrain or hamper it, has often been a kind of intoxication, in which thought and consciousness seemed suspended.
  • Ch. V, p. 90

• But the mind travels far—and mysteriously—in sleep.
  • Ch. IX, p. 175

• But no man has a monopoly of conscience.
  • Ch. X, p. 185

• I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again.
  • Ch. XII, p. 230; about Robert Elsmere

• The only thing which can keep journalism alive—journalism, which is born of the moment, serves the moment, and, as a rule, dies with the moment—is—again, the Stevensonian secret!—charm.
  • Epilogue, p. 362

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Mary Augusta Ward

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Mary Augusta Ward

Wikisource has original works by or about:

Mary Augusta Ward

• Ward at the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography
• Works by Mary Augusta Ward at Project Gutenberg
• Mary Augusta Ward at The Victorian Web
• Works by Ward at The Victorian Women Writers Project
• Mary Ward Centre