Middlemarch (AmazonClassics Edition)

Of course I have not the least claim—indeed, I have already a debt to you which will never be discharged, even when I have been able to pay it in the shape of money.” “Yes, my boy, you have a claim,” said Caleb, with much feeling in his voice. “The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward.

But it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-givin

Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from

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. 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,

I should like not to have so much more than my share without doing anything for others. But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me.” “What is that?” said Will, rather jealous of the belief. “That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against e

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

very little achievement is required in order to pity another man’s shortcomings.

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.”

She sat down in the library before her particular little heap of books on political economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light as to the best way of spending money so as not to injure one’s neighbors, or—what comes to the same thing—so as to do them the most good.