Named source · 1871–1872

Middlemarch Quotes by George Eliot: Context & Meanings

2 quotations linked to Middlemarch by or associated with George Eliot, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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George Eliot’s 1871–1872 novel Middlemarch

Topics and ideas

Helpfulness, social obligation, perspective, judgment, community, moral imagination and the difficulty of seeing other lives from more than one point of view.

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2 quotations with source context and meaning

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“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

George Eliot

Voice: Fictional character · Dorothea Brooke

Meaning & context

A meaningful life is connected with reducing other people’s burdens, making usefulness and care central rather than peripheral.

Source details

Middlemarch, Book VIII, Chapter LXXII, Project Gutenberg #145. Dorothea asks what people live for if not to make life less difficult for one another while arguing that Lydgate’s friends should investigate the calumny against him and support him. It is fictional character dialogue inside the novel’s moral and social drama, not an empirical definition of life’s purpose.

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