past

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1874)

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blessed

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

that kind of beauty

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

George Elliot, Middlemarch (1874)