But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.

For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.

It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite.

My dear Mrs Casaubon," said Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardour, "character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.""Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea.

We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent, we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; but a moment is room wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outlash of a murderous thought and the sharp bakcward stroke of repetance.

Women know no perfect love: Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong; Man clings because the being whom he loves Is weak and needs him.