The Mill on the Floss Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from The Mill on the Floss.

Love Quotes

but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride and soon threw it. (1.3.34)

Family Quotes

"But, you see, when a man’s got brains himself, there’s no knowing where they’ll run to; an’ a pleasant sort o’ soft woman may go on breeding you stupid lads and ̵...

Choices Quotes

"Now, which’ll you have Maggie - right hand or left?" "I’ll have that one with the jam run out," said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom. "Why, you don’t like that, you s...

Memory and the Past Quotes

But if Tom had told his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, "I’d do just the same again." This was his usual mode of viewing his past actions; whereas Maggie was always wish...

Home Quotes

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thought and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the ear...

Suffering Quotes

He hurried down-stairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul. She could see clearly enough now the thing was done th...

Compassion and Forgiveness Quotes

[Tom] was particularly clear and positive on one point, namely that he would punish everybody who deserved it: why, he wouldn’t have minded being punished himself if he deserved it, but then,...

Gender Quotes

"But it’s bad - it’s bad," Mr. Tulliver added, sadly, checking this blamable exultation, "a woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble, I doubt." (...

Society and Class Quotes

It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilisation - the sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. [...] In the enlig...

Art and Culture Quotes

She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like Lucy with a little crown on her head and a little scept...