George Eliot Quotes

836 Sourced Quotes

Most of us who turn to any subject we 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
But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

George Eliot
The natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot.

George Eliot
When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.

George Eliot
There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.

George Eliot
I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.

George Eliot
There's no rule so wise but what it's a pity for somebody or other.

George Eliot
In our springtime every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.

George Eliot
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature;...

George Eliot
When Cain was driven from Jehovah's land
He wandered eastward, seeking some far strand
Ruled by kind gods who asked no offerings
Save pure field-fruits, as aromatic things,
To feed the subtler sense of frames divine
That lived on fragrance for their food and wine:
Wild joyous gods, who winked at faults and folly,
And could be pitiful and melancholy.
He never had a doubt that such gods were;
He looked within, and saw them mirrored there.

George Eliot
The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

George Eliot
The fact is, both callers and work thicken — the former sadly interfering with the latter.

George Eliot
Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.' I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

George Eliot
I would not creep along the coast, but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

George Eliot
It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.

George Eliot
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.

George Eliot
His mind is furnished as hotels are, with everything for occasional and transient use.

George Eliot
There are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them what they're used to.

George Eliot
In marriage, the certainty, 'She will never love me much,' is easier to bear than the fear, 'I shall love her no more.'

George Eliot
Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others.

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

George Eliot
Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

George Eliot
The best travel is that which one can take by one's own fireside. In memory or imagination.

George Eliot
A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

George Eliot
There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel.

George Eliot
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

George Eliot
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

George Eliot
It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

George Eliot
These fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are.

George Eliot
For 'Live and learn,' we should sometimes read 'Live and grow stupid.'

George Eliot