misc

cloy- satiate or sicken with an excess of richness or sweetness

portend- (v) foreshadow as omen
portent- (n) omen

leitmotif- recurrent theme

gloaming- (poetic) twilight

edema- dropsy

FROM SILAS MARNER: (quotes that reflect Silas' transformation from pious man to a miser)

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life

When all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire

But Sally Oates's disease had raised her into a personage of much interest and importance among the neighbors- so sickeing that some derive their social stature from their own misfortunes; is it the pity that others afford them that give them this new found regard; or is it the fact that others can speak of them in hushed, excited tones, a subject of "interest" in an otherwise bored community?

A DESCRIPTION OF SWEATSHOP LABOR IN "SILAS MARNER":
The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath


Our old fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and crossing each other, with incalculable results.