Date: 1847

"I've dreamed in my life dreams that have staid with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."

— Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)

Date: 1847

"His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect."

— Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)

Date: 1859

"No dust has settled on one's mind then [at breakfast-time], and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1859

"But you must have perceived long ago that I have no such lofty vocation, and that I aspire to give no more than a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"For there is nothing more widely misleading than sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent, and sagacity persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Consider, too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies -- of standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for it, of impressing his friend Tulliver with additional respect, of saying something and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably minute ingr...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows -- such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden wi...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"That arrow went straight to Mr Tulliver's heart."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only, but the essential ti megethos which was present in the passion, was wanting to the action; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to pu...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)