{ "type": "book", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "title": "Middlemarch", "slug": "middlemarch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch.md", "author": { "name": "George Eliot", "slug": "george-eliot", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot" }, "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/fingerprint/george-eliot/middlemarch_978-93-5856-326-9.jpg", "quotes_count": 28, "quotes": [ { "id": "f797f37b-8783-4c77-be51-7e2acec44161", "slug": "what-loneliness-is-more", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/what-loneliness-is-more", "text": "What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "loneliness", "slug": "loneliness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loneliness" }, { "name": "suspicion", "slug": "suspicion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suspicion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "f21e4912-90a1-47f0-b926-587a9449f22c", "slug": "i-suppose-a-woman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/i-suppose-a-woman", "text": "‘I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known— ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.’", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "falling in love", "slug": "falling-in-love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/falling-in-love" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "e06bc213-9405-40a0-8e21-58464d81eb70", "slug": "what-do-we-live", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/what-do-we-live", "text": "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "meaning of life", "slug": "meaning-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/meaning-of-life" }, { "name": "helping others", "slug": "helping-others", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/helping-others" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "c45cd3f6-dabe-46a9-b4b8-c7bcde140fb1", "slug": "one-must-be-poor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/one-must-be-poor", "text": "One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "poverty", "slug": "poverty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poverty" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "c34954e3-efd5-42c2-8e93-ed1ee5b91bbf", "slug": "our-vanities-differ", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/our-vanities-differ", "text": "Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "vanity", "slug": "vanity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/vanity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "bc92fc8e-4c84-4560-8cb3-f7063203798d", "slug": "marriage-which-has", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/marriage-which-has", "text": "Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic — the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "marriage", "slug": "marriage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/marriage" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "b360b378-5490-4ad6-acfd-5f762d74ff24", "slug": "people-glorify-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/people-glorify-all", "text": "People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "courage", "slug": "courage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/courage" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "9ce51263-de99-4711-a78b-62a13f3c0c1f", "slug": "but-what-we-call", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/but-what-we-call", "text": "But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "hope", "slug": "hope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hope" }, { "name": "despair", "slug": "despair", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/despair" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "9a97842a-53f8-4a36-98b4-4dd777c53a13", "slug": "if-youth-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/if-youth-is-the", "text": "If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "hope", "slug": "hope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hope" }, { "name": "youth", "slug": "youth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/youth" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "9677669a-5d76-4dce-9443-e8ee30013995", "slug": "for-in-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/for-in-the", "text": "For in the mulitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardor is generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath towards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came. with the vibrations from a woman's glance.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "conformity", "slug": "conformity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conformity" }, { "name": "idealism", "slug": "idealism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/idealism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "93a08b00-8f6e-47b4-bdf9-ee9a9b24ae8c", "slug": "her-finely-touched", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/her-finely-touched", "text": "Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "kindness", "slug": "kindness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/kindness" }, { "name": "modesty", "slug": "modesty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/modesty" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "8ffbe7a2-bd0f-4330-a401-203a4fccba79", "slug": "rosamond-felt-herself", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/rosamond-felt-herself", "text": "Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes— that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. Still, vanity, with a woman's whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests. How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a husband as crown-prince by your side—himself in fact a subject— while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better!", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "vanity", "slug": "vanity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/vanity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "8fbc2f5c-41eb-4af2-9f39-951af4f56678", "slug": "it-is-in-these", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/it-is-in-these", "text": "It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "joy", "slug": "joy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/joy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "8605cc4d-1b5e-46a1-a65a-6de25e666b02", "slug": "i-think-any", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/i-think-any", "text": "I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" }, { "name": "integrity", "slug": "integrity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/integrity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "82a00209-199b-4a68-b548-dde6a5f03602", "slug": "in-all-failures", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/in-all-failures", "text": "In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "success and failure", "slug": "success-and-failure", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/success-and-failure" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "770a7af9-c083-4c8a-8dca-06e62babf2bb", "slug": "that-element-of-tragedy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/that-element-of-tragedy", "text": "That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. 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. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "suffering", "slug": "suffering", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering" }, { "name": "stupidity", "slug": "stupidity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/stupidity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "66102e39-c2ae-490f-919c-28197c893015", "slug": "every-limit-is-a-beginning", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/every-limit-is-a-beginning", "text": "Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "change", "slug": "change", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/change" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "63dd9e82-d176-4e59-9364-3f567ceb0d44", "slug": "some-set-out", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/some-set-out", "text": "Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "hope", "slug": "hope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hope" }, { "name": "patience", "slug": "patience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/patience" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "451b223b-a777-4c33-bf9f-bdb532b42c9d", "slug": "it-is-never", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/it-is-never", "text": "It is never too late to be what you might have been.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "change", "slug": "change", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/change" }, { "name": "personal growth", "slug": "personal-growth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/personal-growth" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "15a0555b-6c1e-480a-a2ab-b5d890d9b2bd", "slug": "there-is-no-creature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/there-is-no-creature", "text": "There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "0e0df71a-daf0-45c0-bd32-b60d4d32481d", "slug": "will-not-a-tiny", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/will-not-a-tiny", "text": "Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "selfishness", "slug": "selfishness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "0b6be77a-4622-4b64-a272-11e025264ede", "slug": "an-accomplished-woman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/an-accomplished-woman", "text": "\"An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.\"", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "knowledge", "slug": "knowledge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/knowledge" }, { "name": "men", "slug": "men", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/men" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "00526047-6265-46c2-ab7b-42e6c33475aa", "slug": "but-a-morbid", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/but-a-morbid", "text": "But a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage— a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "ambition", "slug": "ambition", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ambition" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:52" }, { "id": "cbfe34c1-fae9-4382-92b0-bd91231c8d2f", "slug": "miss-brooke-had", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/miss-brooke-had", "text": "Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "beauty", "slug": "beauty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beauty" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:51" }, { "id": "90dd2f57-a26f-43ac-baec-7935652a9dd0", "slug": "some-have-felt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/some-have-felt", "text": "Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "idealism", "slug": "idealism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/idealism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:51" }, { "id": "39c53fc3-c451-41bb-a0e9-1ec89086e294", "slug": "who-that-cares", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/who-that-cares", "text": "Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "spirituality", "slug": "spirituality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/spirituality" }, { "name": "idealism", "slug": "idealism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/idealism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:51" }, { "id": "3466ec50-7a02-4f2a-8704-c13d6c1e7cb2", "slug": "that-spanish-woman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/that-spanish-woman", "text": "That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "idealism", "slug": "idealism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/idealism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:51" }, { "id": "28d7fc90-068e-4642-8177-95ca3ff1acd3", "slug": "sane-people-did", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/sane-people-did", "text": "Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "madness", "slug": "madness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/madness" }, { "name": "conformity", "slug": "conformity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conformity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:51" } ] }