It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.

The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.

There was a serenity about him always that had the look of innocence, when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.

Chastity ... has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.

But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!

Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.