Quotes & Sayings About Eliot

Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and wagging his tail. She leaned her back against the window-frame, and laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances. — George Eliot

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind. — T. S. Eliot

A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts. — George Eliot

Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. — T. S. Eliot

Things look dim to old folks: they'd need have some young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be. — George Eliot

Some say that I should settle down, go slower and not push so hard, so quickly for such transformational change. To them, I say that you misunderstand the size of the problems we face, the strength of the status quo and the urgency of the people's desire for change. — Eliot Spitzer

Each time we explore Bach's music we feel as if we have traveled great distances to, and through, a remote but entrancing soundscape — John Eliot Gardiner

You'll also need to invest in yourself with the kind of promo that targets your specific audience to help build that word of mouth. Most importantly, believe in what you're doing and in your music and lyrics. — Eliot Lewis

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

There is no water, so things are bad. If there were water, it would be better. But there is no water. — T. S. Eliot

when you are among the fields and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to simple natural pleasures. — George Eliot

People in London are so much more exposed to danger, or bad things. It took me quite a long time to grow up in that environment. — Eliot Paulina Sumner

the devil will be having his finger in what we call our duties as well as our sins. Mayhap — George Eliot

The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart. — 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

Stone Court were scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles — George Eliot

Eliot isn't like anyone I know. He's just Eliot. And even if he isn't refined, he knows how to live. That's why I'm not about to let him die. — K.E. Ormsbee

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's. — George Eliot

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger. — George Eliot

life is long between the desire and the spasm. — T. S. Eliot

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? — T. S. Eliot

He wanted to know if the master sergeant had read Auden, the twentieth century's most influential Christian poet, "English majors in the army, not many of them, not many of us, am I right, Top." Burnette, nonplussed, wondered if he should mention Eliot or the eccentric religious impulses of JD Salinger, but instead mumbled the only line he could recall from Auden's work, "We must love one another or die." Bingo, said the colonel. Son of a bitch had the wrong conjunction. — Bob Shacochis

I love reading another reader's list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful. — T. S. Eliot

Human kind cannot bear much reality. — T. S. Eliot

Our life is the instrument we use to experiment with the truth. — Eliot Pattison

Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. — George Eliot

It's never too late to be the person you might have been. ~George Eliot — A.J. Warner

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

Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations? — T. S. Eliot

There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then forever passed her by. — George Eliot

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

how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting another who is tied to us. — George Eliot

No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. — George Eliot

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling. — George Eliot

Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. — George Eliot

Death has a hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways. — T. S. Eliot

Brothers are so unpleasant. — George Eliot

The disappointments of life can never, any more than its pleasures, be estimated singly; and the healthiest and most agreeable of men is exposed to that coincidence of various vexations, each heightening the effect of the other, which may produce in him something corresponding to the spontaneous and externally unaccountable moodiness of the morbid and disagreeable. — George Eliot

Shane never knew how to address her friends' parents. She wanted to call her Mrs. Eliot's Mom, but knew that the cutesiness would not be appreciated. "Mrs. Kaspar" sounded too like a phone solicitor, which would not do after having kissed the circumference of her son's neck. — Thomm Quackenbush

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to others? — George Eliot

Footsteps shuffled on the stair/Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair/Spread out in fiery points/Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. — T. S. Eliot

I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces. — T. S. Eliot

And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind her, and to whom she is grateful. — George Eliot

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man. — George Eliot

I have a conviction that a few weeks spent in a well organized summer camp may be of more value educationally than a whole year of formal school work. — Charles William Eliot

Perhaps we don't always discriminate between sense and nonsense. — George Eliot

If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again. — George Eliot

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

There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer. — George Eliot

Maggie in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once ornamental and useful. — 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

I wholeheartedly support umbilical stem cell research, but also support embryonic stem cell research. — Eliot Engel

You have learned enough to see that cats are much like you and me. — T. S. Eliot

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. — George Eliot

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound. — George Eliot

On the eve of World War I, an estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Well over a million were deported and hundreds of thousands were simply killed. — Eliot Engel

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. — T. S. Eliot

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. — T. S. Eliot

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion. — George Eliot

Gwendolen would not have liked to be an object of disgust to this husband whom she hated: she liked all disgust to be on her side. — George Eliot

The lady of situations. — T. S. Eliot

For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. — George Eliot

Jenna turned and shot her another worried look. Her tone was ultra soothing. Yeah. I hear you. And I'm head over heels with Harry Potter and
Peeta Mellark. Stay with me. Okay? I'm right here. I feel your love. Now feel mine and start walking. — Anne Eliot

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me. — T. S. Eliot

April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain. — T. S. Eliot

Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs. — George Eliot

The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach. — George Eliot

Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius. — T. S. Eliot

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them. — George Eliot

As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given to us to guide our own steps. We are like the foot soldiers, who hear nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle they are in, but hear plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey. — George Eliot

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. — George Eliot

He did not shrug his shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses ecclesiastically enshrined. — George Eliot

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off. — George Eliot

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. — Charles William Eliot

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea. — T. S. Eliot

The religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage. — George Eliot

Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!
And he to me - and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Of what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
The one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. — T. S. Eliot

The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided - as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard ... Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy. (He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; that seemed to him natural enough.) — George Eliot

Photographs are believed more than words; thus they can be used persuasively to show people who have never taken the trouble to look what is there. — Eliot Porter

We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational. — T. S. Eliot

Vere blinked. And blinked. And blinked. And blinked.
OMG. Try to speak. Try. — Anne Eliot

When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering; the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the waterdrops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst. — George Eliot

We need to meet and flesh out the details of our ... you know ... whatever. I don't know what to call it. Our contract."
"I was thinking the same thing. But can we call it our epic summer romance? Contract sounds so stuffy." He smiles again. — Anne Eliot

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'. — George Eliot

They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once. — T. S. Eliot

There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots. — George Eliot

The promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach, - impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed. — George Eliot

That's not what I meant at all ... that's not it at all. — T. S. Eliot

A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. — T. S. Eliot

Bad poets imitate, good poets steal. — T. S. Eliot

I don't mind [being ugly], do you? — George Eliot

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past. — T. S. Eliot

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic. — George Eliot

My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband. — A.S. Byatt

In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. — T. S. Eliot

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly — George Eliot

And the poet who fears to take the risk that what he writes may turn out not to be poetry at all, is a man who has surely failed, who ought to have adopted a less adventurous vocation — T. S. Eliot

The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action. — Russell Kirk