Middlemarch Quotes

• That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

  George Eliot

  Struggle, Perfectly Good, Light

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.261, Penguin

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• And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch

  George Eliot

  Dream, Names, Feelings

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• People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.

  George Eliot

  Lying, Thinking, Yellow

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.212, Penguin

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• But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric 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.

  George Eliot

  Life, Numbers, Obscurity

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch - A Study of Provincial Life -”, p.367, Read Books Ltd

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• I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

  George Eliot

  Women, Stupid, Ems

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.462, Delphi Classics

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• Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another

  George Eliot

  Soul, Suits, Complexion

  George Eliot (1873). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life”, p.7

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• Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

  George Eliot

  Self, Objectivity, Vision

  George Eliot (2016). “Middlemarch”, p.386, Xist Publishing

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• Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

  George Eliot

  Hurt, Pride, Helping

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.50, Penguin

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• What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

  George Eliot

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot Collection: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, and The Mill on the Floss”, p.935, Xist Publishing

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• 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; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.

  George Eliot

  Hurt, Disappointment, Pride

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.50, Penguin

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• You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well.

  George Eliot

  Love You, Pride, Thinking

  George Eliot “Middlemarch, Volume III”, Lulu.com

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• It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

  George Eliot

  Views, Perspective, Perception

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.367, Wordsworth Editions

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

  George Eliot

  People, Might, Neighbor

  1871-2 Middlemarch, bk.1, ch.1.

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• But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

  George Eliot

  Hope, Pain, Live Life

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.2488, Delphi Classics

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• It is a truism of epistolary psychology that, for example, a Christmas thank-you note written on December 26 can say any old thing, but if you wait until February, you are convinced that nothing less than Middlemarch will do.

  Anne Fadiman

  Old Things, Waiting, Psychology

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• Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.

  George Eliot

  Mind, May, Invisible

  "Oh May I Join the Choir Invisible" l. 1 (1867)

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• Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch is a wise, humane, and delightful study of what some regard as the best novel in English. Mead has discovered an original and highly personal way to make herself an inhabitant both of the book and of George Eliot's imaginary city. Though I have read and taught the book these many years I find myself desiring to go back to it after reading Rebecca Mead's work.

  Harold Bloom

  Wise, Book, Reading

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• It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge.

  George Eliot

  Men, Joy, Forever

  George Eliot (1873). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life”, p.148

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• Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, People, Imperfection

  1925 The Common Reader, 'George Eliot'.

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• It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

  George Eliot

  Music, Interrupted

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.663, Wordsworth Editions

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• We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime.

  George Eliot

  Disappointment, Breakfast, Men And Women

  George Eliot (1873). “Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot”, p.291

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

  George Eliot

  Sarcastic, Destiny, Hands

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.72, Penguin

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• The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.

  George Eliot

  Seems, Ifs

  George Eliot (1890). “Adam Bede: Scenes of Clerical Life”

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• Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

  George Eliot

  Missing, Dresses, Relief

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.6, Booklassic

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• It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.

  George Eliot

  Teaching, Self, Taught

  'Middlemarch' (1871-2) bk. 3, ch. 29

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