George Eliot Quotes & Sayings

Steady work turns genius to a loom. — George Eliot

Folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done. — George Eliot

I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death. — George Eliot

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration. — George Eliot

May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. — George Eliot

That's the way with 'em all: it's as if they thought the world 'ud be new-made because they're to be married. — George Eliot

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest. — George Eliot

Genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humilty, but in a power to making or do, not anything in general, but something in particular. — George Eliot

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good. — 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

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

That plain, middle-aged face, with a grave penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if it had been a promise. — George Eliot

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

Hans: [Y]ou can't conceive what a great fellow I'm going to be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within me.
Deronda: Only a fungoid growth, I daresay - a crowing disease in the lungs. — George Eliot

Romola had had contact with no mind that could stir the larger possibilities of her nature; they lay folded and crushed like embryonic wings, making no element in her consciousness beyond an occasional vague uneasiness. — George Eliot

The story can be told without many words. — George Eliot

These irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even in riper minds than Mary Garth's: our — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an 'appointment') which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge? — George Eliot

Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support. — George Eliot

In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed. — George Eliot

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

There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet. — 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

You know I have duties--we both have duties--before which feeling must be sacrificed. — George Eliot

I wish always to be quoted as George Eliot. — George Eliot

Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humour?' said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. 'The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.'
'With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellow pull you ... — George Eliot

There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done. — George Eliot

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it? — George Eliot

When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. — George Eliot

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. — George Eliot

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. — George Eliot

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 trimming when once the actions have become a lie. — George Eliot

O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them. — George Eliot

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for. — 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

It is not true that love makes all things easy, it makes us chose things that are difficult. — George Eliot

There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere and loving human soul, which will do more to dissipate prejudice and kindle charity than the most elaborate arguments. — George Eliot

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans - which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi. — George Eliot

It is time the clergy are told that thinking men, after a close examination of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development and, therefore, positively noxious. — George Eliot

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

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another. — George Eliot

When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes
one is conscious of her presence. — George Eliot

Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. — George Eliot

But is it what we love, or how we love,
That makes true good? — George Eliot

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841] — George Eliot

This awakening of a new interest - this passing from the supposition that we hold the right opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a sudden care for it, and a sense that our opinions were ignorance - is an effectual remedy for ennui, which, unhappily, cannot be secured on a physician's prescription; — George Eliot

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

No man can be wise on an empty stomach. — George Eliot

If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would never think of but for the rain. If — George Eliot

I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue? — George Eliot

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return. — George Eliot

One can say everything best over a meal. — George Eliot

It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside them forevermore. 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 be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time. — George Eliot

There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs. — George Eliot

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism. — 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

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty. — George Eliot

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous. — George Eliot

Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. — George Eliot

Whatever be thy fate today, Remember, this will pass away! — George Eliot

Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies, all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression to silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. — George Eliot

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. — George Eliot

Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows. — George Eliot

There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,
that does not make a man sing or play the better. — George Eliot

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting: everybody was there, and what else was there to be done? Though, for his own part, he did not care a button for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him, and had been watching him for some time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress. But Godfrey thrust her away without looking at her, and left the room, followed humbly by the unresenting Snuff - perhaps because she saw no other career open to her. — George Eliot

There are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner. — George Eliot

Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their mistakes. — George Eliot

Speech is but broken light upon the depth of the unspoken. — George Eliot

Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

Mr. Brooke sat down in his armchair, stretched his legs towards the wood-fire, which had fallen into a wondrous mass of glowing dice between the dogs, and rubbed his hands gently, looking very mildly towards Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had nothing particular to say. Dorothea closed her pamphlet, as soon as she was aware of her uncle's presence, and rose as if to go. Usually she would have been interested about her uncle's merciful errand on behalf of the criminal, but her — George Eliot

Hetty did not understand how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people. And — George Eliot

As to his religious notions - why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. — George Eliot

think that the rare Englishmen who have this gesture are never of the heavy type - for fear of any lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller errors of men (themselves inclusive). The — George Eliot

It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience
has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feeling
within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength.
We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicians
can wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas. — George Eliot

When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. — George Eliot

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief. — George Eliot

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings.
It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks — George Eliot

We must not inquire too curiously into motives,' he interposed, in his measured way. 'Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. — George Eliot

Rosamund, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own
hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect
could find no words, but involuntarily she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck. — George Eliot

Whatever else she might be, she was not disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling. She was an angel beguiled. It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly and ingenuously. — George Eliot

When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope. — George Eliot

The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. — George Eliot

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

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. — George Eliot

What right have such men to represent Christianity - as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly? — George Eliot

And yet the hope of this paradise had not been enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it forever. Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into the mud and slime, in which it was useless to struggle. He had made his ties for himself which robbed him of all wholesome motive and were a constant exasperation. — George Eliot

Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks. — 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

On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers. — George Eliot

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

They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them. — George Eliot

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another. — George Eliot

The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. 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

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call 'God's birds' because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known? — George Eliot

She had forgotten his faults as we forget
the sorrows of our departed childhood. — George Eliot

Of all forms of human error, prophesy is the most avoidable. — George Eliot