Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.

One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

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

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.

... the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, orthe dulness [sic] of our own jokes.

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?

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.