George Eliot Quotes

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

~ George Eliot

A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.

~ George Eliot

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.

~ 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

But the vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this - that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him. [from Middlemarch, a quote my mother thinks describes the kind of man my father was]

~ George Eliot

Fate has carried me'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand--Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breastTo pierce another.

~ George Eliot

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.

~ George Eliot

Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

~ George Eliot

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.

~ George Eliot

Mrs. Bulstrode's naïve way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask...

~ George Eliot

All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.” “There is correct English: that is not slang.” “I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

~ George Eliot

I am not imposed upon by fine words, I can see what actions mean.

~ George Eliot

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.

~ George Eliot

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination.

~ George Eliot

The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us.

~ George Eliot

Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?

~ George Eliot

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

~ 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

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.

~ George Eliot

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.

~ George Eliot

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

~ George Eliot

If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

~ George Eliot

He was unique to her among men because he’s impressed her as being not her admirer her superior. In some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience as one woman who’s nature is an object of reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man.

~ George Eliot

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.

~ George Eliot

I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.

~ George Eliot

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

~ 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

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.

~ George Eliot

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

~ 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

For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.

~ George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

~ George Eliot

After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.

~ 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

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.

~ George Eliot

She handled it (her trade) with all the grace that belongs to mastery.

~ George Eliot

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

~ George Eliot

mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire.

~ George Eliot

Don't judge a book by its cover

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot