George Eliot Quotes

As to his religious notions - why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. ~ George Eliot

Who can prove Wit to be witty when with deeper ground Dulness intuitive declares wit dull? ~ George Eliot

There is no sorrow I have thought about more than that - to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail. ~ George Eliot

So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. ~ George Eliot

People who write finely must not expect to be left in repose; they will be molested with thanks, at least. ~ George Eliot

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills. ~ George Eliot

By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of custom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life; and as, with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his past and present. ~ George Eliot

The thirst that from the soul doth rise, Doth ask a drink divine. ~ George Eliot

We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our little hurts will be made much of - to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. ~ George Eliot

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life. ~ George Eliot

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,
whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,
which afterwards subside into cheerful peace. ~ George Eliot

There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. ~ George Eliot

When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds. ~ George Eliot

In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields. ~ George Eliot

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth. ~ George Eliot

I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures - flattering, but still not lovely - are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. ~ George Eliot

Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love. ~ George Eliot

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking. ~ George Eliot

O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being "the freshest modern" instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,–that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else? ~ George Eliot

She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal.
But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her - now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life. When she had resolved to go dow ~ George Eliot

We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions - how much more by hearing in hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness! ~ George Eliot

Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. ~ George Eliot

In the first moments when we come away from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged, to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny. ~ George Eliot

The days were longer then (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. ~ George Eliot

But, for the point of wisdom, I would choose / To know the mind that stirs between the wings / Of bees ... ~ George Eliot

His soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that is should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers threadlike in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. ~ George Eliot

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what we imagine might have been. ~ George Eliot

Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow of individual minds, agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the truth of feeling as the only universal bond of union. ~ George Eliot

It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it. ~ George Eliot

That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. Having the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him - rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits; and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion. ~ George Eliot

It is never too late to be who you want to be. ~ George Eliot

The intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear. ~ George Eliot

But he had something else to curse
his own viscious folly, which now seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and vices do when their promptings have long passed away. ~ George Eliot

Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all. ~ George Eliot

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest. ~ George Eliot

The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world. ~ George Eliot

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. ~ George Eliot

Sweet Truth is a queen proud and mighty
Her throne is in heaven above. ~ George Eliot

And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment. ~ George Eliot

And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. ~ George Eliot

When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. ~ George Eliot

What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated. ~ George Eliot

I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about. ~ George Eliot

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship. ~ George Eliot

The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain
The grandest death, to die in vain
for love Greater than sways the forces of the world! ~ George Eliot

If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst. ~ George Eliot

As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it. ~ George Eliot

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he's chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him ... ~ George Eliot

Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. ~ George Eliot

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself. ~ George Eliot

The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The ~ George Eliot

Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it. ~ George Eliot

O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues. ~ George Eliot

I suppose it's the name: there's a deal in the name of a tune. ~ George Eliot

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses. ~ George Eliot

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact. ~ George Eliot

She seated herself on a dark ottoman with the brown books behind her, looking in her plain dress of some thin woollen-white material, without a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring, as if she were under a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin. Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she exaggerated a past solace. ~ George Eliot

Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples. ~ George Eliot

On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers. ~ George Eliot

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement. ~ George Eliot

But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin. If ~ George Eliot

It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue. ~ George Eliot

the devil will be having his finger in what we call our duties as well as our sins. Mayhap ~ George Eliot

But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand. ~ George Eliot

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behaviour to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilised society. ~ George Eliot

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil
widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower. ~ George Eliot

Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles. ~ George Eliot

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. ~ George Eliot

He had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him. ~ George Eliot

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms. ~ George Eliot

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men ... it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid ... knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversations of his elders he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life. ~ George Eliot

Perhaps the wind Wails so in winter for the summers dead, And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries For what has been and is not. ~ George Eliot

The usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion. ~ George Eliot

It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. ~ George Eliot

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. ~ George Eliot

Indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable. ~ George Eliot

The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity. ~ George Eliot

Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries. ~ George Eliot

Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her - that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side. ~ George Eliot

The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity. ~ George Eliot

I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate ... ~ George Eliot

What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time. ~ George Eliot

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them. ~ George Eliot

A woman's rank
Lies in the fulness of her womanhood:
Therein alone she is royal. ~ George Eliot

The betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. On ~ George Eliot

The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of the times, a chief obstacle to true culture. ~ George Eliot

Attempts at description are stupid. Who can all at once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances. ~ George Eliot

Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise. "I never heard you make such a comparison before." "Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good comparison: the match is perfect. ~ George Eliot

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge ... wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it. ~ George Eliot

Meanwhile, in Genoa, the noons were getting hotter, the converging outer roads getting deeper with white dust, the oleanders in the tubs along the wayside gardens looking more and more like fatigued holiday-makers, and the sweet evening changing her office - scattering abroad those whom the mid-day had sent under shelter, and sowing all paths with happy social sounds, little tinklings of mule-bells and whirrings of thrumbed strings, light footsteps and voices, if not leisurely, then with the hurry of pleasure in them; while the encircling heights, crowned with forts, skirted with fine dwellings and gardens, seemed also to come forth and gaze in fulness of beauty after their long siesta, till all strong colour melted in the stream of moonlight which made the streets a new spectacle with shadows, both still and moving, on cathedral steps and against the facades of massive palaces; and then slowly with the descending moon all sank in deep night and silence, and nothing shone but the port lights of the great Lanterna in the blackness below, and the glimmering stars in the blackness above. ~ George Eliot

They were too hopelessly alienated in their inner life ever to have that contest which is an effort towards agreement. ~ George Eliot

Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all. ~ George Eliot

But now, since they had been in Rome, with all the depths of her emotion roused to tumultuous activity, and with life made a new problem by new elements, she had been becoming more and more aware, with a certain terror, that her mind was continually sliding into inward fits of anger and repulsion, or else into forlorn weariness. ~ George Eliot

Mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire. ~ George Eliot

There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then forever passed her by. ~ George Eliot

When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window. ~ George Eliot

He was a likable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our friends. ~ George Eliot

Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. ~ George Eliot

When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. ~ George Eliot

Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow. ~ George Eliot