I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed?

The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.

She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through.

When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument.

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