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Helen's Reviews > The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss
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I first read The Mill on the Floss when I was 17 years old. I couldn’t put it down - read for 14 hours straight. However, many years later, I did not remember much about the book at all, only that I loved it. Now, after all these years, I see why.
George Eliot is better at describing our innermost thoughts and feelings than any author I have ever read. Why do we read books? A good story is always entertaining, but more importantly, I think we read to gain new insights and to hear our own insights expressed more succinctly and beautifully than we could ever imagine doing ourselves.
The Mill on the Floss starts off almost as a comedy, her dry wit, at least for me, is laugh out loud funny at times. It becomes increasingly more serious in tone and story line until the amazing ending.
Take your time when you read Eliot (if you can). Savor every exquisite word and insight. Her gift in writing about the human condition was unparalleled.
George Eliot is better at describing our innermost thoughts and feelings than any author I have ever read. Why do we read books? A good story is always entertaining, but more importantly, I think we read to gain new insights and to hear our own insights expressed more succinctly and beautifully than we could ever imagine doing ourselves.
The Mill on the Floss starts off almost as a comedy, her dry wit, at least for me, is laugh out loud funny at times. It becomes increasingly more serious in tone and story line until the amazing ending.
Take your time when you read Eliot (if you can). Savor every exquisite word and insight. Her gift in writing about the human condition was unparalleled.
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Quotes Helen Liked
“She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.”
― The Mill on the Floss
― The Mill on the Floss
“Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.”
― The Mill on the Floss
― The Mill on the Floss
“In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s narrow griefs—perhaps of her father’s heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present.”
― The Mill on the Floss
― The Mill on the Floss
“O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being "the freshest modern" instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,–that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else?”
― The Mill on the Floss
― The Mill on the Floss
Reading Progress
August 18, 2016
–
Started Reading
August 18, 2016
– Shelved
August 23, 2016
–
Finished Reading
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Thank you, Lisa. I have become a George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) fan for sure! On to Silas Marner next:-)
Isn't that what makes a real classic: that you need to be patient and take your time with it, and slowly learn to love every turn of the story?