That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power agains… - George Eliot

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.

She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.