Lorna Doone

Some passages I remember from the book I read more than 10 years ago:

For it strikes me that of all human dealings, satire is the very lowest, and most mean and common. It is the equivalent in words, for what bullying is in deeds; and no more bespeaks a clever man, than the other does a brave one. These two wretched tricks exalt a fool in his own low esteem but never in his neighbour's; for the deep common sense of our nature tells that no man of a genial heart, or of any spread of mind, can take pride in either. And though a good man may commit the one fault or the other, now and then, by way of outlet, he is sure to have compunctions soon, and to scorn himself more than the sufferer.

(page 40 of Squire Faggus Makes Some Lucky Hits)

Then (if you come to think again) lo - or I will not say lo! for no one can behold it - only feel, or but remember, what a real mother is. Ever loving, ever soft, ever turning sin to goodness, vices into virtues; blind to all nine-tenths of wrong; through a telescope beholding (though herself so nigh to them) faintest decimal of promise, even in her vilest child. Ready to thank God again, as when her babe was born to her; leaping (as at kingdom-come) at a wandering syllable of Gospel for her lost one.
All this our mother was to us, and even more than all of this ; and hence I felt a pride and joy in doing my sacred duty towards her, now that the weather compelled me

(page 8 of The Great Winter)