How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity. When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. (4.82)
In death, Adam can forgive his father best. Tell us: how can you forgive somebody who's always off blowing money at the local inn? Do you blunder in and shout "Father, I forgive you!" in front of everybody? But now that Thias is dead, he is no longer a burden or a nuisance to the Bede household—simply a sign of personal downfall and a man to be pitied.
Quote #2
Perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting fondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable faults. (5.63)
Mr. Irwine's compassion is remarkable in several respects. He gives more consideration to his sisters than their own mother does, and gives them considerably more attention that Eliot's narrator. Yes, even this narrator has some pretty big failures of compassion. While the story itself quickly moves past them, Irwine lingers over these unfortunate maids.
Quote #3
These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people—amongst whom your life is passed—that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice. (17.4)
Eliot's narrator does not sugarcoat weakness and stupidity. Yet the best way to improve society is to show compassion for people like these—not to coldly demand that people should be better. So buy those self-help books for yourself, but don't shove them in everybody else's face.