# Quote — George Eliot, Middlemarch

> She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.

- Author: [George Eliot](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot.md)
- Book: [Middlemarch](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/she-could-not

## More from this book

> It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/it-is-true.md)

> What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

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> ‘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.’

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