/staff avatar Quotation added by staff

Why not add this quote to your bookmarks?


  ...maternal delight.
"Forgive me, if I speak hastily," he said, with diffident gravity. "Why have you resolved now on disclosing to me what you took care to have me brought up in ignorance of? Why--since you seem angry that I should be glad?"
"Oh--the reasons of our actions!" said the Princess, with a ring of something like sarcastic scorn. "When you are as old as I am, it will not seem so simple a question--'Why did you do this?' People talk of their motives in a cut and dried way.
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.   I am not a monster, but I have not felt exactly what other women feel--or say they feel, for fear of being thought unlike others. When you reproach me in your heart for sending you away from me, you mean that I ought to say I felt about you as other women say they feel about their children. I did _not_ feel that. I was glad to be freed from you. But I did well for you, and I gave you your father's fortune. Do I seem now to be revoking everything?--Well, there are reasons. I feel many...   Eliot, George

Excerpt from Daniel Deronda · This quote is about motives · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.


A bit about Eliot, George ...

George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880), who was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.

These people bookmarked this quote:

More on the author

This quote around the web

Loading...

 

Search Quotations Book