Middlemarch

Middlemarch

by

George Eliot

Tertius Lydgate is an idealistic, ambitious young doctor who arrives in Middlemarch hoping to positively reform the state of medicine in the area. Trained in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, he is passionate about the latest advances in medical research and hopes to open a medical school attached to the New Hospital, of which he is the director. Lydgate faces bitter opposition to his plans for reform, particularly from the other doctors in Middlemarch. Things get worse when he marries Rosamond Vincy, whom he loves, but who pressures him into spending money he doesn’t have in order to impress others. Tormented by debt, Lydgate accepts a loan from Bulstrode and gets implicated in the scandal surrounding him. Following this Lydgate is forced to abandon the directorship of the New Hospital and move to London. Despite some success there he considers himself a failure because he never realized his excessive ambitions. He dies of diptheria at the age of 50.

Tertius Lydgate Quotes in Middlemarch

The Middlemarch quotes below are all either spoken by Tertius Lydgate or refer to Tertius Lydgate. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women and Gender Theme Icon
).
Book 2, Chapter 13 Quotes

‘The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir,’ said the banker. ‘I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status, for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople here. My own imperfect health has induced me to give some attention to those palliative resources which the divine mercy has placed within our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the metropolis, and I am painfully aware of the backwardness under which medical treatment labours in our provincial districts.’

Related Characters: Mr. Nicholas Bulstrode (speaker), Tertius Lydgate
Related Symbols: New Hospital
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 16 Quotes

Of course, he had a profession and was clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage as a Prospect of rising in rank and getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank.

Related Characters: Tertius Lydgate, Rosamond Vincy
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 17 Quotes

When I was young, Mr Lydgate, there never was any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions. But, now if you speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be contradicted.'

Related Characters: Mrs. Farebrother (speaker), Tertius Lydgate
Page Number: 169-179
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 44 Quotes

The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Bulstrode has put the medical direction into my hands. Of course I am glad of that. It gives me an opportunity of doing some good work - and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to co-operate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions.

Related Characters: Tertius Lydgate (speaker), Mr. Nicholas Bulstrode
Related Symbols: New Hospital
Page Number: 439
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 7, Chapter 64 Quotes

His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests, its horsedealer's desire to make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.

Related Characters: Tertius Lydgate
Page Number: 648
Explanation and Analysis:

The business was felt to be so public and important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out the Reform Bill.

Related Characters: Mr. Nicholas Bulstrode, Tertius Lydgate
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 719-720
Explanation and Analysis:
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Tertius Lydgate Quotes in Middlemarch

The Middlemarch quotes below are all either spoken by Tertius Lydgate or refer to Tertius Lydgate. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women and Gender Theme Icon
).
Book 2, Chapter 13 Quotes

‘The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir,’ said the banker. ‘I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status, for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople here. My own imperfect health has induced me to give some attention to those palliative resources which the divine mercy has placed within our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the metropolis, and I am painfully aware of the backwardness under which medical treatment labours in our provincial districts.’

Related Characters: Mr. Nicholas Bulstrode (speaker), Tertius Lydgate
Related Symbols: New Hospital
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 16 Quotes

Of course, he had a profession and was clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage as a Prospect of rising in rank and getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank.

Related Characters: Tertius Lydgate, Rosamond Vincy
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 17 Quotes

When I was young, Mr Lydgate, there never was any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions. But, now if you speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be contradicted.'

Related Characters: Mrs. Farebrother (speaker), Tertius Lydgate
Page Number: 169-179
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 44 Quotes

The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Bulstrode has put the medical direction into my hands. Of course I am glad of that. It gives me an opportunity of doing some good work - and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to co-operate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions.

Related Characters: Tertius Lydgate (speaker), Mr. Nicholas Bulstrode
Related Symbols: New Hospital
Page Number: 439
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 7, Chapter 64 Quotes

His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests, its horsedealer's desire to make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.

Related Characters: Tertius Lydgate
Page Number: 648
Explanation and Analysis:

The business was felt to be so public and important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out the Reform Bill.

Related Characters: Mr. Nicholas Bulstrode, Tertius Lydgate
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 719-720
Explanation and Analysis: