Kelly’s Reviews > Middlemarch > Status Update

"But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary." p603

"a dashing young lady she was - fine boarding school - fit for a lord's wife - only Archie Duncan threw it at her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him." p611

"perfectly wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable..." p583

"...what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other? Expenditure - like ugliness and errors - becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it..." p589

"...whose life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl." p572

"She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she chose - always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with salutary meaning.." p573

"you are too delightfully ridiculous. If you were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to play the wicked coquette..." p579

"You must be sure of two things: 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 honourable to you to be doing something else." p562

"..like the majority of young gentlemen, he wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables." p567

"...for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new." p547

"In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public opinion in Frick was against them..." p554

"...and with the working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman without capital and generally unskilled." p557

“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