Browse 7 quotations connecting George Eliot with Love, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner.
“The little child had come to link him once more with the whole world.”
The child reverses Silas’s isolation by creating a relationship that reconnects him with ordinary human concern, neighborhood life, affection, and a future beyond his private hoard.
Source note: Silas Marner; Eliot describes the social and emotional change produced by Eppie after Silas had withdrawn from other people and organized life around his gold.
“There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and there was love between the child and the world.”
Affection between caregiver and child becomes a bridge rather than a closed bond: loving the child also draws Silas outward toward the wider world she naturally engages.
Source note: Silas Marner; the narration emphasizes that Eppie’s attachment joins Silas not only to her but also to the social world from which he had retreated.
“My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother.”
Mrs Tulliver’s immediate decision to accompany Maggie turns motherhood into concrete solidarity when her daughter expects rejection and isolation.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book VII, Project Gutenberg #6688. Mrs Tulliver responds after Maggie returns under public condemnation.
“bear it well, because we love you; your children will always love you.”
Maggie offers her father an assurance that bankruptcy does not cancel his children’s attachment, separating family love from public or financial failure.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book III, Project Gutenberg #6688. Maggie speaks to her father when he realizes the extent of the bankruptcy.
“you mustn't think o' running away from father. What 'ud father do without his little wench?”
Mr Tulliver answers a child’s impulse to run away by stressing reciprocal attachment: Maggie matters to her father as much as she depends on him.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book I, Project Gutenberg #6688. Mr Tulliver speaks to Maggie; dialect and fictional voice are retained rather than normalized into authorial advice.
“the mother pleased herself with wearing out her own hands to save the hands that had so much more life in them.”
The narrator depicts maternal sacrifice through physical labour, showing Mrs Tulliver taking extra wear upon herself to preserve more possibility for her daughter.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book IV, Project Gutenberg #6688. Narrator commentary on Mrs Tulliver's work for Maggie; the period gender context remains part of the scene.
“Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her”
Remembered parental tenderness becomes a source of endurance for Maggie when her father is vulnerable, showing how earlier care continues to shape later loyalty.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book III, Project Gutenberg #6688. Narrator commentary on Maggie beside her father after the family's collapse.