“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.” ”

—Middlemarch, George Eliot

“ “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

—George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“Take the [Victorian Novel] with you everywhere, that’s what. Bank line-ups, buses, bathrooms, those precious 8 minutes while the pasta boils — you know what to do! A few pages here, a few pages there, and next thing you know, you’re 500 pages in, with only another 200 to go”

—From “How To Read a Victorian Novel,” which I do from time to time (and have a degree in btw) and so should you.

“ “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” ”

—George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Blameless people are always the most exasperating.”

—Middlemarch by George Eliot

“What is your religion?" said Dorothea. "I mean -- not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?" "To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will.”

—Middlemarch, George Eliot

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

—Middlemarch by George Eliot

“People were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools' caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”

—Middlemarch, George Eliot
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