For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone. "What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown sea. Hypnotized by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and within, her two books beneath her arm returned again, much as a soldier prepares for battle.

At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints upon mind indelibly.

It is the duty of the writer to describe.

What a labour writing is ... making one sentence do the work of a page; that's what I call hard work.

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