Date: 1860

"As for Tom's school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of uninteresting or unintelligible ideas."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing concentration of desire, Mr Tulliver retained the feeling towards his 'little wench' which made her presence a need to him though it would not suffice to cheer him. She was still the desire of his eyes, but the sweet spring of fatherly love was now mi...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1889

"Her mind became like a machine out of work—rusty, creaking, difficult to set going."

— Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925)