George Eliot - People Quotes

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I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is.

George Eliot
People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes...

George Eliot
[Most people] are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. … Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.

George Eliot
Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them.

George Eliot
A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.

George Eliot
We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.

George Eliot
There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

George Eliot
Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.

George Eliot
I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.

George Eliot
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course...

George Eliot
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.

George Eliot
It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.

George Eliot
How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?

George Eliot
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

George Eliot
How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true — the religion that is strength to the healthy — is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive.

George Eliot
We do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind.

George Eliot
Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

George Eliot
Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

George Eliot
We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

George Eliot