Temps difficiles

Évaluer les gens en force motrice, leur fixer des règles comme s’ils étaient les chiffres d’un total ou des machines, comme s’ils n’avaient ni affections ni sympathies, ni souvenirs ni préférences, ni une âme pour languir et pour espérer, […] ça n’arrangera jamais rien.

D'un côté les patrons contre lui, de l'autre, les ouvriers ; lui, ne demandait qu'à travailler dur, en paix, et à faire ce qu'il jugeait juste. Un homme ne peut-il avoir une âme à lui, un cerveau à lui? Doit-il se dévoyer complètement en suivant ceux-ci, ou se dévoyer complètement en suivant ceux-là, ou sinon se voir traqué comme un lièvre?

What do I know, father,' said Louisa in her quiet manner, 'of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be gasped? [...]
The baby-preference than even I have heard of as common among children, has never had its innocent resting-place in my breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's fear.

No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had taken great pity of him years ago, and to her alone he had opened his closed heart all this time, on the subject of his miseries; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleasure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honour, self-respect, and tranquillity, now all torn to pieces. He thought of the waste of the best part of his life, of the change it made in his character for the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his existence, bound hand and foot to a dead women, and tormented by a demon in her shape. He thought of Rachael, how young when they were first brought together in the circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow old. He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path - for him - and how he had sometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and despair.

-Oh, ma pauvre santé ! s'exclama Mrs Gradgring. La fille voulait entrer à l'école, et Mr Gradgrind voulait des filles à l'école, et Louisa et Thomas m'ont dit tous les deux que la fille voulait aller à l'école et que Mr Gradgrind voulait des filles à l’école, et comment aurait-il été possible de les contredire quand le fait était exact?"

Some people hold [...] that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the Head to be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient; how can I venture this morning to say it is !

'Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I feared while I strove against it - as it has been my task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if you had known that there lingered in my breast, sensibilities, affections, weaknesses capable of being cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is, - would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I hate?'
He said, 'No. No, my poor child.'
'Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me - for no one's enrichment - only for the greater desolation of this world - of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?'
'O no, no. No, Louisa.'
'Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to say. [...] With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.'
'I never knew you were unhappy, my child.'
'Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.'
'And you so young, Louisa !' he said with pity.
'And I so young.'

Le bois flotta devant elle car ses yeux étaient baignés de larmes. Elles venaient d'une source profonde longtemps cachée, et son coeur était rempli d'une douleur cruelle qui ne trouvait dans ces larmes aucun soulagement.

Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else's thorns in addition to his own.

Elle savait que les ouvriers de Coketown étaient tout cela.Mais elle n'avait guère plus songé à les diviser en unités qu'à diviser les gouttes d'eau qui composent la mer.