Quotes from book

The Mill on the Floss

“Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.”

“No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.”

“These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

“It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.”

“If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.”

“Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.”

“Don't judge a book by its cover”

“What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!”

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

“Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.”

“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.”

“I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”

“Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”

“Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.”

“Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.”

“I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.”

“Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than leave it him in your will.”

“I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.”

“There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.”