Do you mean bitterly reproach the thistle for not bearing grapes ?" "I do not.

It is my own fault if I idealize a thistle until the thistle and I both think it is a vine.

But if people appear to love and honor certain truths which they know are everything to me, and claim kinship with me on that common ground, and then desert when the pinch comes, as it always does come, and act from worldly motives, then I know that they have never really cared for what they professed to love, that what I imagined to be a principle was only a subject of conversation--and--I withdraw." "You withdraw!" echoed the Bishop.

"This is terrible." "Just as I should," continued Hester, "if I were in political life.

If a man threw in his lot with me, and then, when some means of worldly advancement seemed probable from the other side, deserted to it, I should not in consequence think him incapable of being a good husband and father and landlord.