George Eliot - Man Quotes

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

George Eliot
Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.

George Eliot
I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha been left to the men.

George Eliot
If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else.

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
An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.

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
I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much.... I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in's work. The very grindstone 'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.

George Eliot
It is the glory of the heritage
Thy life has left, that makes thy outcast age:
Thy limbs shall lie dark, tombless on this sod,
Because thou shinest in man's soul, a god,
Who found and gave new passion and new joy
That nought but Earth's destruction can destroy.
Thy gifts to give was thine of men alone:
'Twas but in giving that thou couldst atone
For too much wealth amid their poverty.

George Eliot
He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

George Eliot
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

George Eliot
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.

George Eliot
But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

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

George Eliot
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

George Eliot
A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.

George Eliot
I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone.

George Eliot
When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.

George Eliot
The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence.

George Eliot
A man out of temper does not wait for proofs before feeling toward all things, animate and inanimate, as if they were in a conspiracy against him, but at once thrashes his horse or kicks his dog in consequence.

George Eliot
What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.

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

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
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
Great Love has many attributes, and shrines For varied worshippers, but his force divine Shows most its many-named fulness in the man Whose nature multitudinously mixed-- Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought-- Resists all easy gladness, all content Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul Flooded with consciousness of good that is Finds life one bounteous answer.

George Eliot
A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.

George Eliot
He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.

George Eliot
Autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs.'

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
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