Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?
Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.
To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.
About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.
It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.
Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.
A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.
Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?
The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.
That great Cathedral space which was childhood.
One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.
Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?
One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.
Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic.
The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.
I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.