“ When a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready, in the interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the background. ”
George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872). copy citation
| Author | George Eliot |
|---|---|
| Source | Middlemarch |
| Topic | importance politics |
| Date | 1872 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/145/145-h/145-h.htm |
Context
“with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences.”
To point out other people’s errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from, but Mr. Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient. When a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready, in the interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the background. And this particular reproof irritated him more than any other. It was eminently superfluous to him to be told that he was reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode’s yoke; and though he usually enjoyed kicking, he was anxious to refrain from that relief.”
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