Kelly’s Reviews > Middlemarch > Status Update

“There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that - to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.” p764

“…her love might help a man more than her money.” p769

“She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union, and yet she had taken no posture of renunciation.” p773

“You are going to do something uncomfortable, I know…uneasy at this Hamlet-like raving.” p776

“…one might say that an ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbour unhappy for her good.” p741

“…found to her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of…” p747

“…and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach.” p749

“…Rosamond’s discontent was due to the conditions of marriage itself…” p753

“People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbours.” p735

“And of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better.” p736

“Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life…struggle with worldly annoyances.” p737

“A man vows, and yet will not cast away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.” p708

“I rob you of no good chance. As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man’s sin unless I’m clear it must be done to save the innocent. That is my way of thinking, Mr. Bulstrode…” p696

“Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?” p688

“And I can’t be happy in working with you, or profiting by you. It hurts my mind. I must beg you to seek another agent.” p695

“he told himself that it was ten times harder for her than for him: he had a life away from home, and constant appeals to his activity on behalf of others.” p667

“He could not say “you are losing confoundedly, and are making everybody stare at you…” p673

“…that temptation in me - I am sure you know it. I am sure you know that the satisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine.” p674

“Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness,” said Rosamund. p653

“Here was a case in which it could not be enough simply to disobey and be serenely, placidly obstinate….” p654

“…and make her indifferent to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards whom she felt some resentment for his exaltation of Mrs. Casaubon.” p661