Adam Bede

by George Eliot

But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would never think of but for the rain.

imagination is a licensed trespasser:

we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

for grief in its freshness feels the need of associating its loss and its lament with every change of scene and incident,

All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still, creative activity of our thought.

and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in.