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

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

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.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.