George Eliot Quotes

836 Sourced Quotes

The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.

George Eliot
Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error.

George Eliot
It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

George Eliot
There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

George Eliot
It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

George Eliot
Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.

George Eliot
Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.

George Eliot
I have no courage to write much unless I am written to. I soon begin to think that there are plenty of other correspondents more interesting — so if you all want to hear from me you know the conditions.

George Eliot
What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

George Eliot
The embitterment of hatred is often as unaccountable to onlookers as the growth of devoted love, and it not only seems but is really out of direct relation with any outward causes to be alleged.

George Eliot
Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.
And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living, except those whose end we know.

George Eliot
There is no short-cut no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must still be trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

George Eliot
Women know no perfect love:
Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
Man clings because the being whom he loves
Is weak and needs him.

George Eliot
Our life is determined for us — and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing and only think of bearing what is laid upon us and doing what is given us to do.

George Eliot
It is pleasant to have a kind word now and then when one is not near enough to have a kind glance or a hearty shake by the hand.

George Eliot
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.

George Eliot
What should I do—how should I act now, this very day... What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.

George Eliot
Knightly love is blent with reverence
As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue.

George Eliot
I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

George Eliot
Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.

George Eliot
But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!

George Eliot
If we only look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified: by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment.

George Eliot
It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

George Eliot
There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.

George Eliot
No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled.

George Eliot
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger — not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.

George Eliot
That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'ull tell him he's wise.

George Eliot
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

George Eliot
So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.

George Eliot
It was a pity he couldna be hatched o'er again, an' hatched different.

George Eliot