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)

Date: 1860

"Maggie Tulliver, you perceive was by no means that well-trained, well-informed young person that a small female of eight or nine necessarily is in these days: she had only been to school a year at St Ogg's, and had so few books that she sometimes read the dictionary; so that in travelling over h...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Whence Mr Stelling concluded that Tom's brain being peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements: it was his favourite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which pr...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)