Felix Holt quote from chapter 6

George Eliot strikes again (does she know people or does she know people!):

The stronger will always rule, say some, with an air of confidence which is like a lawyer's flourish, forbidding exceptions or additions. But what is strength? Is it blind wilfulness that sees no terrors, no many-linked consequences, no bruises and wounds of those whose cords it tightens? Is it the narrowness of a brain that conceives no needs differing from its own, and looks to no results beyond the bargains of to-day; that tugs with emphasis for every small purpose, and thinks it weakness to exercise the sublime power of resolved renunciation? There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

From Felix Holt: The Radical chapter 6

Felix Holt quote from Chapter 27

More quotes from George Eliot's Felix Holt: The Radical (Felix himself speaking, of course)

"I have to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don't blame them, or think I am better than they; their circumstances are different. I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labour and common burthen of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the push and scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the push and the scramble in the long-run. But I care for the people who live now and will not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, I prefer going shares with the unlucky."

and:

"I'm determined never to go about making my face simpering or solemn, and telling professional lies for profit; or to get tangled in affairs where I must wink at dishonesty and pocket the proceeds, and justify the knavery as part of a system I can't alter. If I once went into that sort of struggle for success, I should want to win -- I should defend the wrong that I had once identified myself with. I should become everything that I see beforehand to be detestable. I should do this, as men are doing it every day, for the ridiculously small prize -- perhaps for none at all -- perhaps for the sake of two parlours, a rank eligible for churchwardenship, a discontented wife and several unhopeful children."

Changing

For the most part E has been uninterested in having her picture taken but recently she has become more amenable. It's great to get more than just scowls in response to the appearance of the camera.

Felix Holt quote from Chapter 1

"The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love -- that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another." - George Eliot from Felix Holt: The Radical Chapter 1