Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
George Eliot
The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?
“Young ladies don’t understand political economy, you know,”
in looking at her his face was often lit up by a smile like pale wintry sunshine.
Sir James said “Exactly,” and she bore the word remarkably well.
“Your sex are not thinkers, you know—varium et mutabile semper—that kind of thing.
knew there was a great deal of nonsense in her—a flighty sort of Methodistical stuff.
“Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics, that kind of thing, are too taxing for a woman—too taxing, you know.”
And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
in a year from this time that girl will hate him. She looks up to him as an oracle now, and by-and-by she will be at the other extreme.
Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a florid man, who would have served for a study of flesh
purplefaced bachelors.
Rosamond Vincy, who had excellent taste in costume, with that nymph-like figure and pure blondness which give the largest range to choice in the flow and color of drapery.
the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty’s intentions about families.
Only a few children in Middlemarch looked blond by the side of Rosamond, and the slim figure displayed by her riding-habit had delicate undulations.
“You know better, Mary. Women don’t love men for their goodness.”
But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings.
He cared not only for “cases,” but for John and Elizabeth, especially Elizabeth.
and in spite of venerable colleges which used great efforts to secure purity of knowledge by making it scarce, and to exclude error by a rigid exclusiveness in relation to
fees and appointments,
She was melancholy, and seemed grateful; her presence was enough, like that of the evening light.
“legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require knowledge of another kind.
in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office.
the right thing said seems quite astonishingly right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid.
they came in with the mixed stuffs that will neither wash nor wear.
Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which surrounds the appreciated or desponding author.
“Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing.
There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
in fact, she never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide.
Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores,
all in continuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with the excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy ineffectiveness,
All existence seemed to beat with a lower pulse than her own, and
said Celia, regarding Mr. Casaubon’s learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a neighboring body.
and for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidly undiscerning and odiously unjust.
his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors—floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea.
the source of the illness was the common error of intellectual men—a too eager and monotonous application:
But a clergyman is tied a little tight.
speech which it had lately reported for that imperfectly edited organ the “Middlemarch Pioneer.”
Besides, if I was obliged to speak, I should say I was not fond of strangers coming into a town.”
Who was ever awe struck about a testator, or sang a hymn on the title to real property?
make an unfair use of the improbable things which seemed likely to happen.
giving occasional dry wrinkly indications of crying—as if capable of torrents in a wetter season—at
A man whose life is of any value should think of his wife as a nurse: that is what I should do, if I married;
