Date: 1860

"She read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas-a-Kempis, and the 'Christian Year' (no longer rejected as a 'hymn-book') that they filled her mind with a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of h...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"That new inward life of hers, notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with the gradually enriched colour and outline of her blossoming youth"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"That is pain to me, and always will be pain, until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"But you will not always be shut up in your present lot: why should you starve your mind in that way?"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Then -- the pity of it that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in!"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"While Maggie's life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows for ever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"For Tom had never desired success in this field of enterprise: and for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"'Ay, sir, you say true,' returned Bob, nodding his head aside, 'I think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for I'm so full o' plans, one knocks another over."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"What you call self-conquest -- blinding and deafening yourself to all but one train of impressions, is only the culture of monomania in a nature like yours."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)