Middlemarch Quotes - Page 2

• For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.

  George Eliot

  Pain, Memories, Compassion

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6067, Delphi Classics

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• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.

  George Eliot

  Sweet, Memories, Home

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.542, Penguin

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• Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.

  George Eliot

  Thinking, Half, World

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.365, Wordsworth Editions

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• After all, the true seeing is within.

  George Eliot

  Seeing

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.2220, Delphi Classics

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• If there is a perfect book to start the year with it has to be Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch.

  The Edge

  Book, Years, Perfect

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• You must love your work and not always be looking over the edge of it wanting your play to begin.

  George Eliot

  Work, Love You, Play

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.608, Booklassic

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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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.

  Vikram Seth

  Hate, Book, Long

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• But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Character, Rights

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.245, OUP Oxford

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• I had not read George Eliot, so read a few. I felt ashamed I hadn't read "Middlemarch" before.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Ashamed, Eliot, Felt

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• What's your favorite book?' is a question that is usually only asked by children and banking identity-verification services--and favorite isn't, anyway, the right word to describe the relationship a reader has with a particularly cherished book. Most serious readers can point to one book that has a place in their life like the one that 'Middlemarch' has in mine.

  Rebecca Mead

  Children, Book, Identity

  Rebecca Mead (2014). “My Life in Middlemarch”, p.184, Broadway Books

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• Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

  P. D. James

  Years, Care, Might

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• You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - if it were 'Twilight' or 'Middlemarch?'

  Michael Gove

  Daughter, Mother, Book

  "What does it mean to be an educated person?". Speech at the Brighton conference, www.gov.uk. May 9, 2013.

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• You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.

  George Eliot

  Husband, Men, Said

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.109, Penguin

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