The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) Prelude
A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission
afterwards.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 9
He said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some
unknown regions preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 9
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 10
Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy
and investigated by science.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 11
Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of
effects from one life or another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the
frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbour.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 11
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.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 2, ch. 20
We do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy
which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of
mankind.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 2, ch. 20
A woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for
her.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 3, ch. 25
It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at
this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 3, ch. 29
A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a woman so well when he sees a
certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men.
‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 4, ch. 39
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860) bk. 1, ch. 10
The dead level of provincial existence.
‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860) bk. 5, ch. 3
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860) bk. 6, ch. 3.