Silas Marner Quotations
“Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world”
“that shaken trust in God and man which is little short of madness”
“the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect”
“it was pleasant to him to feel them in his palm, and look at their bright faces.”
“unborn children”
“his life had shrunken away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of
its own breadth into a little shivering thread”
“His natural irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a position in which
dreaded consequences seemed to press equally on all sides”
“Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong linen rope by which Nancy would have drawn
him safe to the green banks … he had let himself be dragged back into the mud and slime”
“the yoke a man creates for himself will breed hate in the kindliest nature”
“he stepped forward into the darkness”
“few men could be more harmless than poor Marner”
“The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently”
“[he] gave out a wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation”
“Some folks ‘ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob” – Mr Snell
“This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe neighbours… had
doubtless its influence on Marner”
“Let’s have no accusing o’ the innicent, Master Marner”
“‘Hurt?’ said Godfrey bitterly. ‘He’ll never be hurt; he’s made to hurt other people’”
“‘I don’t pretend to be a good fellow,’ he said to himself; ‘but I’m not a scoundrel – at least
I’ll stop short somewhere’”
“the old disposition to rely on chances that might be favourable to him”
“The Squire’s life was quite as idle as his sons’”
“I’d lieve you married Lammeter’s daughter as anybody”
“Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a
law they believe in”
“It had been a clinging life; and though the object around which its fibres clung was a dead
disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for clinging”
By Sam Adam Day - revise.purplemagpie.com
“she [Dolly] was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder
and more serious elements of life, and pasture her mind upon them”
“there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-man, a faint
consciousness of dependence on their good will”
“The pretty uns do for fly-catchers – they keep the men off us” – Priscilla
“it [child] was immediately absorbed in watching the bright living thing running towards
it”
“to his blurred vision it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth”
“old quiverings of tenderness – old impressions of awe at the presentiment of some Power
presiding over his life”
“there was one terror in his mind at the moment; it was, that the woman might not be
dead”
“But he had not the moral courage to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy”
“warming him into joy because she had joy”
“as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and
trembling gradually into full consciousness”
“We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening
destructions: a hand is put into theirs … and the hand may be a little child’s”
“He saw himself with all his happiness centred on his own hearth”
“there is the freshest blossom of youth close by his side - a blonde dimpled girl of eighteen”
“All we’ve got to do is trusten Master Marner” - Dolly
“I’d like to think you’d have somebody else besides me”
“To adopt a child because children of your own have been denied you was to try and choose
your lot in spite of providence”
“[Godfrey] was kept in a certain awe of this gentle wife who had watched his looks with a
yearning to obey them”
“perhaps if he’d married a woman who’d have had children, she’d have vexed him in other
ways”
“Do you think I’d have refused to take her in, if I’d known she was yours?”
- Nancy
“At that moment Godfrey felt the bitterness of an error that was not only futile, but had
defeated its own end”
“It [money] takes no hold over me now” - Silas
“I can’t leave my father, nor own anybody nearer than him” - Eppie
By Sam Adam Day - revise.purplemagpie.com
“Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we encounter an unexpected
obstacle”
“God gave her to me because you turned your back on her” – Silas
“You’d cut us i’ two”
“I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy: I shall pass for childless now against my wish” Godfrey
“I got you, Nancy, in spite of it all” - Godfrey
“Oh, what a dark, ugly place!” - Eppie
“Lantern Yard’s gone” - Silas
“now she says she’ll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die”
“she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily”
“I think nobody could be happier than we are” – Eppie
By Sam Adam Day - revise.purplemagpie.com