Middlemarch

by George Eliot

Rosamond’s discontent in her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for self-suppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her husband; but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm which diverted her ennui. She constructed a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her life: Will Ladislaw was always to be a bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and have an understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be sending out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes.

goat lines, actually burst out laughing

it would have required a great deal of disentangling reflection, such as had never entered into Rosamond’s life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble was less than if her husband had been certainly known to have done something criminal.

This disentangling reflection is also lacking in the neighbors

These thoughts were like a drama to her and made her eyes bright and gave an attitude of suspense to her whole frame, though she was only looking out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright green buds which stood in relief against the dark evergreens.

natural objects are actual aids to meditation

She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before—a fountain of friendship towards men, a man can make a friend of her.

as women seem to have felt about Jesus

all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.

Eden

the best way of spending money so as not to injure one’s neighbours or—what comes to the same thing—so as to do them the most good.

modern

“It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with,

Casaubon is likened here to the cuttle-fish, which is similar to the squid or octopus. Disturbing and apt analogy. But we now know how intelligent cuttle-fish are.

A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.

Eliot has sometimes likened Dorothea to Don Quixote's lady, Dulcinea, but throughout "Middlemarch" she is really casting Dorothea as Don Quixote himself

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.

Compare this unvisited tomb with an unwept death in "Silas Marner" that also has unknown consequences: "There was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard at Batherley it was known that the dark-haired woman with the fair child, who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again. That was all the express note taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men. But the unwept death which, to the general lot, seemed as trivial as the summer-shed leaf, was charged with the force of destiny to certain human lives that we know of, shaping their joys and sorrows even to the end." And see again the "Little Way" expressed by St. Thérèse of Lisieux: "Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."