Quotes by George Eliot
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There is a lightness about the feminine mind -- a touch and go -- music, the fine arts, that kind of thing -- they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know.

Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.

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

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.

Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the domain of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.

Perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering, than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning -- when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth.

You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback.

Where you have friends you should not go to inns.

But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.

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.

I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me.

If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.

Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.

Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhaltations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence.

Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.

But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents towards itself, and makes the whole life its tributary.

A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it.

What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.

Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love.

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos.

The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.

It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.

What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

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?

So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.

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.

The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity.

Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm.

The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.

This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.

Learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

It is seldom a medical man has true religious views -- there is too much pride of intellect.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.

We all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.

The higher life begins for us ... when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law.

If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner.

I am influenced at the present time by far higher considerations and by a nobler idea of duty than I ever was when I held the Evangelical belief.

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.

It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don't give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade.

No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience.

For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful..

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life -- a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them?

It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon.

In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also.

Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth, and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a mystery we can give no account of.

What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman's face? And is there any harmony of tints that has such stirring of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice?

The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'.

Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

The mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.

Life would be no better than candlelight tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been.

The Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.

The devil tempts us not; 'tis we who tempt him, beckoning his skill with opportunity.

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

It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.

A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness -- calling their denial knowledge.

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

But she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that men would be so, and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.

Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

Legal redress is imperfect satisfaction for having one's head broken with a brickbat.

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.

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.

Things are achieved when they are well begun. The perfect archer calls the deer his own While yet the shaft is whistling.

Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on -- -- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't.

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.

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

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

That is the bitterest of all, -- to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.

It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love-this hunger of the heart-as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.

There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us.

Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor.

I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.

You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only es.