Middlemarch

by George Eliot

Since I can do no good because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near it. —THE MAID’S TRAGEDY: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

“Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.”

“Dime; no ves aquel caballero que hácia nosotros viene sobre un caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza un yelmo de oro?” “Lo que veo y columbro,” respondiò Sancho, “no es sino un hombre sobre un as no pardo como el mio, que trae sobre la cabeza una cosa que relumbra.” “Pues ese es el yelmo de Mambrino,” dijo Don Quijote. —CERVANTES.

“It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man’s face.”

Say, goddess, what ensued, when Raphaël, The affable archangel . . . —EVE. The story heard attentive, and was filled With admiration, and deep muse, to hear Of things so high and strange. —PARADISE LOST, B. VII.

The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path.

1st Gent. Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves. 2d Gent. Ay, truly: but I think it is the world That brings the iron.

Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are most part lean, dry, ill-colored . . . and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquainas’ works; and tell me whether those men took pains. —BURTON’S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, P. I, s. 2.

My lady’s tongue is like the meadow blades, That cut you stroking them with idle hand. Nice cutting is her function: she divides With spiritual edge the millet-seed, And makes intangible savings.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

Pleasure and melons Want the same weather. —ITALIAN PROVERB.

Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now, And you her father. Every gentle maid Should have a guardian in each gentleman.

Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses,”

1st Gent. An ancient land in ancient oracles Is called “law-thirsty”: all the struggle there Was after order and a perfect rule. Pray, where lie such lands now? . . . 2d Gent. Why, where they lay of old—in human souls.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. 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.

He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed. —FULLER.

But deeds and language such as men do use, And persons such as comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes. —BEN JONSON.

She did not look at things from the proper feminine angle. The society of such women was about as relaxing as going from your work to teach the second form, instead of reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven.

Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

He had more tow on his distaff Than Gerveis knew. —CHAUCER.

The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

1st Gent. How class your man?—as better than the most, Or, seeming better, worse beneath that cloak? As saint or knave, pilgrim or hypocrite? 2d Gent. Nay, tell me how you class your wealth of books, The drifted relics of all time. As well sort them at once by size and livery: Vellum, tall copies, and the common calf Will hardly cover more diversity Than all your labels cunningly devised To class your unread authors.

One can begin so many things with a new person!—even begin to be a better man.

First watch for morsels, like a hound Mix well with buffets, stir them round With good thick oil of flatteries, And froth with mean self-lauding lies. Serve warm: the vessels you must choose To keep it in are dead men’s shoes.

Black eyes you have left, you say, Blue eyes fail to draw you; Yet you seem more rapt to-day, Than of old we saw you. Oh, I track the fairest fair Through new haunts of pleasure; Footprints here and echoes there Guide me to my treasure: Lo! she turns—immortal youth Wrought to mortal stature, Fresh as starlight’s aged truth— Many-naméd Nature!

No man, one sees, can understand and estimate the entire structure or its parts—what are its frailties and what its repairs, without knowing the nature of the materials.

Not only young virgins of that town, but gray-bearded men also, were often in haste to conjecture how a new acquaintance might be wrought into their purposes, contented with very vague knowledge as to the way in which life had been shaping him for that instrumentality. Middlemarch, in fact, counted on swallowing Lydgate and assimilating him very comfortably.

All that in woman is adored In thy fair self I find— For the whole sex can but afford The handsome and the kind. —SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.

The clerkly person smiled and said, Promise was a pretty maid, But being poor she died unwed.

Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts, Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence; Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line, May languish with the scurvy.

Behold the other one, who for his cheek Sighing has made of his own palm a bed. —PURGATORY, VII.

Language is a finer medium.”

A child forsaken, waking suddenly, Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rove, And seeth only that it cannot see The meeting eyes of love.

we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual.

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his heartbeats, but only felt that her own was beating violently.

Hire facounde eke full womanly and plain, No contrefeted termes had she To semen wise. —CHAUCER.

We stayed for a long time; she was simple and good. Not knowing evil; she was good; From the richness of her heart she gave me charity, And while listening as the heart gave itself, Without daring to think about, I gave mine; She took my life, and never knew. —ALFRED DE MUSSET.

She was not a woman to be spoken of as other women were.

“Your horses of the Sun,” he said, “And first-rate whip Apollo! Whate’er they be, I’ll eat my head, But I will beat them hollow.”

The offender’s sorrow brings but small relief To him who wears the strong offence’s cross. —SHAKESPEARE: SONNETS.

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a heaven in hell’s despair. . . . . . . Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another’s loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven’s despite. —W. BLAKE: SONGS OF EXPERIENCE.

He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise—that I could beat him while he railed at me. —TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian: We are but mortals, and must sing of man.

1st Gent. All times are good to seek your wedded home Bringing a mutual delight. 2d Gent. Why, true. The calendar hath not an evil day For souls made one by love, and even death Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves While they two clasped each other, and foresaw No life apart.

I found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort. —GOLDSMITH.

Marriage, like religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward requirement,

It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her.