Kelly’s Reviews > Middlemarch > Status Update

“I still think the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.” p537

“That is the nonsense that you wise men talk!” p538


“…he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon now she was a rich widow.” P541

“…keeping him asunder from Dorothea.” p546

“For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.” p521

“…whose acquaintance with Bulstrode seemed to imply passages in the banker’s life so unlike anything that was known of him in Middlemarch.” p523

“…suddenly completed itself without conscious effort…agreeable as a completed sneeze.” p530

“I don’t like divinity, and preaching, and feeling obliged to look serious.” p511

“Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.” p513

“…being a clergyman would be only for gentility’s sake, and there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile gentility.” p516

“…magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of whist.” p518

“Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel, could hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes.” p501

“Pray pity him: so many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by speechifying on entirely private grounds!” p503

“…and begin a career, which at five and twenty seemed probable in the inward order of things…which is delightful.” p507

“I think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful…if he has been taken away, that is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful.” p491

“He felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and conflict of self-repression…” p492

“It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much” p495

“…and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own…” p496

“There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne a headache.” p475

“The poor child had become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition and the labour of her husband’s life.” p478

“…she simply felt that she was going to say ‘yes’ to her own doom…” p481

“And as to contending for a reform short of (a House of Commons not weighted with the landed class), it is like asking for a bit of an an avalanche which has already begun to thunder.” p460

“Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its own conversion?” p464

“…whether we try for nothing till we find immaculate men to work with…should you inquire which had the better motives or brains?” p466

“But oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short on the boundary of knowledge, but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance.” p442

“…it was as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog…” p449

“…but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonizing on it.” p456

“…collar all beholders would know the price of, hands duly set off with rings, and that controlled self-consciousness of manner which is the expensive substitute for simplicity.” p433

“…but prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle…” p435

“…no stifling the offence of being young, a newcomer, and happening to know something more than the old inhabitants.” p440

“Every proud mind knows something of this experience, perhaps only overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough to make efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of exalting.” p417

“…which compelled him to find other reasons for his conduct than jealousy and vindictiveness.” p420

“…shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him.” p426