PRINCIPLE in MIDDLEMARCH - verbalworkout.com

26 uses

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Definition

a basic rule or belief

The exact meaning of principle can depend upon its context. For example:

"our guiding principles" — basic moral beliefs that guide decisions and behavior
"electromagnetic principles" — rules describing how the world works
"She lacks principles." — lacks moral guidelines
"We agree in principle." — about important basic beliefs

I suppose you don't conduct business on what you call unworldly principles.
Book 2 — Old and Young (6% in)

Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full presence of the pout being kept back by an habitual awe of Dorothea and principle; two associated facts which might show a mysterious electricity if you touched them incautiously.
Book 1 — Miss Brooke (4% in)
Here was a man who could understand the higher inward life, and with whom there could be some spiritual communion; nay, who could illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!
Book 1 — Miss Brooke (14% in)
This fundamental principle of human speech was markedly exhibited in Mr. Brooke.
Book 1 — Miss Brooke (28% in)
She inwardly declined to believe that the light-brown curls and slim figure could have any relationship to Mr. Tucker, who was just as old and musty-looking as she would have expected Mr. Casaubon's curate to be; doubtless an excellent man who would go to heaven (for Celia wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so unpleasant.
Book 1 — Miss Brooke (61% in)
Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should have to spend as bridesmaid at Lowick, while the curate had probably no pretty little children whom she could like, irrespective of principle.
Book 1 — Miss Brooke (61% in)
At the age of two-and-twenty Mary had certainly not attained that perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to the less fortunate girl, as if they were to be obtained in quantities ready mixed, with a flavor of resignation as required.
Book 1 — Miss Brooke (93% in)
I do not expect you to understand my grounds of action—it is not an easy thing even to thread a path for principles in the intricacies of the world—still less to make the thread clear for the careless and the scoffing.
Book 2 — Old and Young (7% in)
It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode to gain as much power as possible, that he might use it for the glory of God.
Book 2 — Old and Young (32% in)
The Doctor was more than suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas of frilling and sentiment.
Book 2 — Old and Young (57% in)
...abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself...
Book 2 — Old and Young (69% in)
"Well, well, nobody's perfect, but"—here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words—"what I am thinking of is—what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched.
Book 3 — Waiting for Death (33% in)
It had occurred to him that he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and he had reflected that in taking a wife, a man of good position should expect and carefully choose a blooming young lady—the younger the better, because more educable and submissive—of a rank equal to his own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good understanding.
Book 3 — Waiting for Death (55% 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)
"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared to take what the situation offers," said Will.
Book 5 — The Dead Hand (29% in)
This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent participation in my purpose.
Book 5 — The Dead Hand (45% in)
But you observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched.
Book 5 — The Dead Hand (46% in)
But it was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful.
Book 5 — The Dead Hand (47% in)
"But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs. Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.
Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (16% in)
On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to make herself subordinate.
Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (28% in)
And he is anything but an unprincipled man.
Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (46% in)
When Will Ladislaw had come in, a second fender, said to have been forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising those things most which were most in need of praise.
Book 6 — The Widow and Wife (68% in)
"I am sure he is a very deserving, well-principled young man," said Rosamond, with a neat air of patronage in return for Mrs. Plymdale's wholesome corrections.
Book 7 — Two Temptations (16% in)
As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy.
Book 7 — Two Temptations (98% in)
But I must say that your present attitude is painfully inconsistent with those principles which you have sought to identify yourself with, and for the honor of which I am bound to care.
Book 7 — Two Temptations (98% in)
"A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have forbidden her from seeing him again—who takes her out of her proper rank—into poverty—has the meanness to accept such a sacrifice—has always had an objectionable position—a bad origin—and, I believe, is a man of little principle and light character.
Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (86% in)

There are no more uses of "principle" in Middlemarch.

Typical Usage (best examples)

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principle used in Middlemarch

principle
used in Middlemarch