All 50 Uses of
resolve
in
Middlemarch
- Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve.
Chpt Prel (definition 1)resolve = firmness of purpose
- He really did not like it: giving up Dorothea was very painful to him; but there was something in the resolve to make this visit forthwith and conquer all show of feeling, which was a sort of file-biting and counter-irritant.
Chpt 1 (definition 2)resolve = decide; or decision
- A certain change in Mary's face was chiefly determined by the resolve not to show any change.†
Chpt 1 (definition 2)
- Vincy was resolved to be good-humored.†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- It seems to me very miserable not to resolve on some course and act accordingly.
Chpt 2 (definition 2) *resolve = decide
- There was another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an opportunity for some indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and to be the possessor of genuine though undemanded qualifications.
Chpt 2 (definition 1)resolve = firmness of purpose
- It was the one thing which he was resolved to do.†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is begotten by circumstances—some feeling rushing warmly and making resolve easy, while debate in cool blood had only made it more difficult.†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough.†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else's resolve helped him.
Chpt 2 (definition 2)resolve = decide; or decision
- I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else's resolve helped him.
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- Permanent rebellion, the disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was not possible to her;
Chpt 2 (definition 1) *resolve = firmness of purpose
- And by a sad contradiction Dorothea's ideas and resolves seemed like melting ice floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had been but another form.†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- For an instant he felt that the struggle, was causing a queer contortion of his mobile features, but with a good effort he resolved it into nothing more offensive than a merry smile.†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- Do you not think better of him for his resolve?†
Chpt 2 (definition 2)
- It is true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow east by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking.†
Chpt 3 (definition 2)
- He resolved—and kept his resolution—that he would not go to Mr. Vincy's except on business.†
Chpt 3 (definition 2)
- It would be a graceful, easy way of piecing on the new habits to the old, to have a few playful words with Rosamond about his resistance to dissipation, and his firm resolve to take long fasts even from sweet sounds.†
Chpt 3 (definition 2)
- Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called understrappers, he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- That seems very simple and easy in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions against it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming influences of the day.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- In the earlier half of the day there was business to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- She had been so used to struggle for and to find resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of western light that the vision itself had gained a communicating power.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- And this night she was from the beginning sleepless, excited by resolves.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- The energy that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- It cost her a litany of pictured sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those sorrows—but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his hand.†
Chpt 4 (definition 2)
- But he was not without contradictoriness and rebellion even towards his own resolve.†
Chpt 5 (definition 2)
- For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely.†
Chpt 5 (definition 2)
- But he had come at last to create a trust for himself out of Dorothea's nature: she could do what she resolved to do: and he willingly imagined her toiling under the fetters of a promise to erect a tomb with his name upon it.†
Chpt 5 (definition 2)
- But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new devices.†
Chpt 5 (definition 2)
- Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his "principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together.†
Chpt 5 (definition 2)
- He was standing two yards from her with his mind full of contradictory desires and resolves—desiring some unmistakable proof that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which such a proof might bring him.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- The actual state of his mind—his proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman—lay quite out of her imagination, and she had interpreted all his behavior easily enough by her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict on any active friendship between them.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- She only felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapen into resolve.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the blame on his own deficiencies.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him, he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him, he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- "I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion, as of a man ready to put himself in the breach.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a private interview at nine o'clock.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve.†
Chpt 6 (definition 2)
- Lydgate would not have chosen soon to recur to the plan of parting with the house; he was resolved to carry it out, and say as little more about it as possible.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- There was a conflux of emotions and thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough way to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- His flushed effort while talking to Mr. Farebrother—his effort after the cynical pretence that all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice to a fool's illusion—was but the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old stimuli of enthusiasm.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- But even if his resolves had forced the two images into combination, the useful preliminaries to that hard change were not visibly within reach.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- If he were not only to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the hideous fettering of domestic hate?†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- Now is there civil war within the soul: Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier Makes humble compact, plays the supple part Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist For hungry rebels.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- There was a cunning calculation under this noisy joking—a cool resolve to extract something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application of torture.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to the risks of defying him.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
Definitions:
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(1) (resolve as in: Her resolve weakened.) firmness of purpose (strong determination to do something)
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(2) (resolve as in: I resolved to stop drinking.) to decide -- typically a firm or formal decisioneditor's notes: In modern writing resolve is typically used to emphasize a firm or formal decision. In classic literature, it is used more frequently and often simply replaces decide or determine.