George Eliot Quotes

836 Sourced Quotes

Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.

George Eliot
We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.

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
I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be murdered.

George Eliot
To men who only aim at escaping felony, nothing short of the prisoner's dock is disgrace.

George Eliot
The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.

George Eliot
It is better - it shall be better with me because I have known you.

George Eliot
There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.

George Eliot
Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.

George Eliot
I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.

George Eliot
Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love.

George Eliot
With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader.

George Eliot
Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.

George Eliot
What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.

George Eliot
A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.

George Eliot
But faithfulness can feed on suffering,
And knows no disappointment.

George Eliot
Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?

George Eliot
In the days when the spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak--there might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palled undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.

George Eliot
I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world... profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove.

George Eliot
The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'.

George Eliot
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

George Eliot
Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone that by unexpected words.

George Eliot
A man's a man. But when you see a king, you see the work of many thousand men.

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
In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception.

George Eliot