41 uses
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Definition
unchanging, continuous, or happening repeatedly
- There was a constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters.Book 3 — Waiting for Death (41% in)
- Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.Prelude (44% in)
- CHAPTER I. "Since I can do no good because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near it.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (0% in)
- ...open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring; indeed, it was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia: Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good for Celia to accept him.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (3% in)
- As it was, she constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her own ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed cottages were not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory?Book 1 — Miss Brooke (50% in)
- Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all, strengthening medicines.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (73% in)
- Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not only its striking downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse, and begetting new consciousness of interdependence.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (78% in)
- For his observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother's assurance that the banker would not overlook opposition.Book 2 — Old and Young (54% in)
- ...in Rome, only to be seen by one who could move about freely; he found himself in agreement with Mr. Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a set of box-like partitions without vital connection.Book 2 — Old and Young (87% in)
- The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view.Book 2 — Old and Young (96% in)
- Seated in a famous arm-chair and in his best suit, constantly within sight of good cheer, he had a comfortable consciousness of being on the premises, mingled with fleeting suggestions of Sunday and the bar at the Green Man; and he informed Mary Garth that he should not go out of reach of his brother Peter while that poor fellow was above ground.Book 3 — Waiting for Death (84% in)
- In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes on the watch, and own relatives eager to be "sitters-up."Book 3 — Waiting for Death (85% in)
- This is constantly done by good speakers, even when they anticipate no answer.Book 3 — Waiting for Death (91% in)
- One is constantly wondering what sort of lives other people lead, and how they take things.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (4% in)
- You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy, were you not?Book 4 — Three Love Problems (31% in)
- Sir James Chettam's mind was not fruitful in devices, but his growing anxiety to "act on Brooke," once brought close to his constant belief in Dorothea's capacity for influence, became formative, and issued in a little plan; namely, to plead Celia's indisposition as a reason for fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and to leave her at the Grange with the carriage on the way, after making her fully aware of the situation concerning the management of the estate.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (61% in)
- ...moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and, obliged to help Mr. Brooke in arranging "documents" about hanging sheep-stealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures towards getting a lodging for himself in Middlemarch and cutting short his constant residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier images a tickling vision of a sheep-stealing epic written with Homeric particularity.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (61% in)
- ...and white ducks seeming to wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,—all these objects under the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a sort of picture which we have all paused over as a "charming bit," touching other sensibilities than those which are stirred by the depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming capital, as seen constantly in the newspapers of that time.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (68% in)
- Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's impressions, were constantly at their weaving work.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (91% in)
- She is ready prey to any man who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (93% in)
- ...offensive to the laity; and to Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who, though not one of his patients, questioned him in an affable manner on the subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty popular explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that it must lower the character of practitioners, and be a constant injury to the public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work was by their making out long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (13% in)
- Even good Mr. Powderell, who in his constant charity of interpretation was inclined to esteem Lydgate the more for what seemed a conscientious pursuit of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts during his wife's attack of erysipelas, and could not abstain from mentioning to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on a similar occasion had administered a series of boluses which were not otherwise definable than by their remarkable effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas...Book 5 — The Dead Hand (17% in)
- CHAPTER XLVIII Surely the golden hours are turning gray And dance no more, and vainly strive to run: I see their white locks streaming in the wind— Each face is haggard as it looks at me, Slow turning in the constant clasping round Storm-driven.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (43% in)
- Will's coming seemed to her quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable movement in him towards a reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (43% in)
- You don't, of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar's praises.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (65% in)
- Lydgate was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (50% in)
- And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (50% in)
- It is true Lydgate was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable—is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (52% in)
- Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot-jacks to "Berghems;" but Mr. Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his recommendation.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (68% in)
- The thought that she herself might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the memory of the little they had lived through together turned pale and shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had had constant companionship.Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (97% in)
- When he left her to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times harder for her than for him: he had a life away from home, and constant appeals to his activity on behalf of others.Book 7 — Two Temptations (31% in)
- The billiard-room at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of a certain set, most of whom, like our acquaintance Mr. Bambridge, were regarded as men of pleasure.Book 7 — Two Temptations (33% in)
- ...had so many times boasted both to himself and others that he was totally independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely because they enabled him to carry out his own ideas of professional work and public benefit—he had so constantly in their personal intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense that he was making a good social use of this predominating banker, whose opinions he thought contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture of...Book 7 — Two Temptations (42% in)
- He mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with such evident delight that she could not bear to chill his pleasure by expressing her constant fear of his undertaking too much.Book 7 — Two Temptations (56% in)
- On this subject the banker had thought that his fears were too constantly on the watch to be taken by surprise; but he had been mistaken.Book 7 — Two Temptations (59% in)
- When I nursed my poor master, Mr. Robisson, I had to give him port-wine and brandy constant, and a big glass at a time," added Mrs. Abel, with a touch of remonstrance in her tone.Book 7 — Two Temptations (77% in)
- As to any certainty that a particular method of treatment would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing against such dogmatism; he had no right to speak, and he had every motive for being silent.Book 7 — Two Temptations (93% in)
- But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon.Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (1% in)
- ...been towards the vindication of Will from any sullying surmises; and when, in her meeting with him afterwards, she had at first interpreted his words as a probable allusion to a feeling towards Mrs. Lydgate which he was determined to cut himself off from indulging, she had had a quick, sad, excusing vision of the charm there might be in his constant opportunities of companionship with that fair creature, who most likely shared his other tastes as she evidently did his delight in music.Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (40% in)
- I shall be constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (97% in)
- I shall be constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (98% in)
There are no more uses of "constant" in Middlemarch.
Typical Usage
(best examples)