George Eliot Quotes

836 Sourced Quotes

In no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.

George Eliot
I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now; everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.

George Eliot
Until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid--too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority.

George Eliot
Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!

George Eliot
Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, And righteous or unrighteous, being done, Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself Be laid in stillness, and the universe Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more.

George Eliot
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.

George Eliot
There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room.

George Eliot
What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?

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
Goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

George Eliot
Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth.

George Eliot
Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.

George Eliot
It is hard to believe long together that anything is "worth while," unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.

George Eliot
It is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

George Eliot
Dark the Night, with breath all flowers,
And tender broken voice that fills
With ravishment the listening hours,--
Whisperings, wooings,
Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings
In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills!
Dark the night
Yet is she bright,
For in her dark she brings the mystic star,
Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love,
From some unknown afar.

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

George Eliot