How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[Maggie] added that early experience of struggle, of conflict between the inward impulse and outward fact which is the lot of every imaginative and passionate nature [...]. [Her past] had been filled with so eager a life in the triple world of reality, books, and waking dreams, that Maggie was strangely old for her years in everything except in her entire want of that prudence and self-command [...] (4.2.2)
The idea of Maggie’s "triple life" is really intriguing. Maggie is so passionate and imaginative that she has essentially lived three times the amount of other people, requiring extra outlets and experiences. Fiction and imagination count as life experience here.
Quote #5
When uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts […] (4.2.6)
The narrator implies that culture and imagination are extremely important here, since, otherwise, people who are suffering experience a shrunken and deadened inner life.
Quote #6
"Certain strains of music affect me so strangely - I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last I might be capable of heroisms."
"Ah! I know what you mean about music - I feel so," said Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. (5.1.40-1)
Maggie and Philip discuss the power of music to actually transform a person and to illicit, or cause, a strong emotional response in them. Music can really alter and even improve a person – Philip mentions that he gains confidence through music.