Sublime

Avant qu’elle se mariât, elle avait cru avoir de l’amour ; mais le bonheur qui aurait dû résulter de cet amour n’étant pas venu, il fallait qu’elle se fût trompée, songeait-elle. Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres.

For anything I can tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him than she would be with any other man.’ ‘Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you would rather dine under the hedge than with Casaubon alone. You have nothing to say to each other.’ ‘What has that to do with Miss Brooke’s marrying him? She does not do it for my amusement.’ ‘He h

It was usual with him to season his pleasure in showing favour to one person by being especially disagreeable to another, and Mary was always at hand to furnish the condiment

‘Let Mrs Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor.’ ‘That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to choose from? A woman’s choice usually means taking the only man she can get.

‘Because I like you better than any one else. But I know you despise me.’ ‘Yes, I do – a little,’ said Mary, nodding, with a smile. ‘You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wise opinions about everything.’ ‘Yes, I should.’ Mary was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokingly mistress of the situation. When a conversation has taken a wrong t

If only he were more successful, she reflected. He was a Catholic and a gentleman, and her grandfather, at least, believed that his talents as a poet were considerable. His suit might one day be worth a good deal. But she shrank from the thought. Such an odd man, subject to headache and ill-humor; writing his poems and talking about Virgil, with no

cholera: in her notebook, ‘Quarry for Middlemarch’, George Eliot noted the appearance of cholera in England in 1831–2.

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