For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.

We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.

There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.

Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.