George Eliot Quotes

Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf.

~ George Eliot

In poor Rosamond’s mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.

~ George Eliot

It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us indissolubly with the established order.

~ George Eliot

In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.

~ George Eliot

Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.

~ George Eliot

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.

~ George Eliot

Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.

~ George Eliot

...but prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle — solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness.

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

~ George Eliot

The days were longer then (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings.

~ George Eliot

I should never have been happy in any profession that did not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbors. There is nothing like the medical profession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the distance and befriend the old fogie in the parish too.

~ George Eliot

What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!

~ George Eliot

How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian.

~ George Eliot

He sat watching what went forward with the quiet outward glance of healthy old age.

~ George Eliot

Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.

~ 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

Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.

~ George Eliot

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.

~ George Eliot

College mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ‘em.

~ George Eliot

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

~ George Eliot

In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.

~ George Eliot

Her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day’s newspaper.

~ George Eliot

The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it oftensubsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent.

~ George Eliot

He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea, which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

~ George Eliot

If I really care for you, if I try to think myself into your position and orientation, then the world is bettered by my effort at understanding and comprehension. If you respond to my effort by trying to extend the same sympathy and understanding to others in turn, then the betterment of the world has been minutely but significantly extended. We want people to feel with us, more than to act for us.

~ George Eliot

Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally, though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific information.

~ George Eliot

It's them that takes advantage that gets advantage i' this world.

~ George Eliot

Blessed is the man who having nothing to say refrains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

~ George Eliot

Necessity does the work of courage.

~ George Eliot

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

~ George Eliot

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning.

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

~ George Eliot

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

~ George Eliot

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

~ George Eliot

Better a false belief than no belief at all.

~ George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

~ George Eliot

Those who trust us educate us.

~ George Eliot

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement much disputation and yet more personal liking.

~ George Eliot