Middlemarch

Dr. Tertius Lydgate:
The reason doctors prescribe so much medicine, Mr. Mawmsey, is because it's the only way they can make their money. If they could charge for their consultation then they wouldn't have to overdose the King's legion. And that's the worst kind of treason, eh?

Dorothea Brooke:
Let us always be striving, Celia. Striving, always striving to be better than we truly are!

Celia Brooke:
But Dodo, I'm already better than you truly are.

Rosamond Vincy:
[defending herself for flirting with Lydgate] It's not my fault I'm blonde and pretty, Mary.

Mary Garth:
[bitterly] Well, you don't have to enjoy it so much!

Rev. Camden Farebrother:
[warning Lydgate about Rosamund] Miss Vincy is the most beautiful girl in Middlemarch - though not one of its leading minds.

Dr. Tertius Lydgate:
[laughing] I'm not interested in her mind. I want to marry her.

Rosamond Vincy:
You know, Mary, it's not my fault that I'm blonde and beautiful.

Mary Garth:
Maybe not. But you don't have to enjoy it so much, do you?

Rev. Camden Farebrother:
[describing Dorothea] Miss Brooke's yearning for self-sacrifice and her hunger for martyrdom mask a secret desire to bully the lesss virtuous and impose her will on others - for their own good, of course. It's education that does it, my boy. Education and too much church. What will happen when all women become like her?

Dr. Tertius Lydgate:
[sighs] Men will become better too, I suppose. I hope I'm dead by then, though.