Mr Thornton would rather have heard that she was suffering the natural sorrow. In the first place, there was selfishness enough in him to have taken pleasure in the idea that his great love might come in to comfort and console her; much the same kind of strange passionate pleasure which comes stinging through a mother's heart, when her drooping infant nestles close to her, and is dependent upon her for everything.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep yearning for emotional connection and the desire to be needed by a loved one in times of sorrow.
In this excerpt from Elizabeth Gaskell, Mr. Thornton's longing for the privilege of comforting his beloved in her suffering reflects a complex intertwining of love and selfishness. He derives a strange pleasure from the notion of her sorrow, wishing that his affection could be a source of solace for her. This mirrors a mother's instinctive joy in nurturing her child, emphasizing the innate human desire to be a source of support and comfort in the lives of those we love.
In practice
In a speech about enduring love, one might quote this to illustrate how true affection involves a desire to support one another in difficult times.
Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence - every step of which was rich, as each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recal some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character.
It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young; afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive." (Mr. Bell)
Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.
Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life....My precept is, do something, my sister, do good if you can; but at any rate, do something.
Mr. Thornton felt that in this influx no one was speaking to Margaret, and was restless under this apparent neglect. But he never went near her himself; he did not look at her. Only, he knew what she was doing — or not doing — better than anyone else in the room. Margaret was so unconscious of herself, and so much amused by watching other people, that she never thought whether she was left unnoticed or not.
Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.
Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.
I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.
If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.
There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty.
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