“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”

“Esther always avoided asking questions of Lydley, who found an answer as she found a key, by pouring out a pocketful of miscellanies.”

“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.”

“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.”

“How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian.”

“But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.”

“Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.”