George Eliot Quotes (451 Quotes)

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

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

Music sweeps by me as a messenger - Carrying a message that is not for me

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

. . . 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.

He who rules must humor full as much as he commands.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit

A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink . . .

Hatred is like fire it makes even light rubbish deadly.

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

He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose....

To manage men, one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

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.

Speech is often barren but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

A maggot must be born i the rotten cheese to like it.

. . . people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.

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.

But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths.

Debasing the moral currency.

. . . her heart lived in no cherished secrets of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

It was a still afternoon--the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

These bitter sorrows of childhood when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.

In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother's knee

May every soul that touches mine Be it the slightest contact Get therefrom some good Some little grace one kindly thought One aspiration yet unfelt One bit of courage For the darkening sky One gleam of faith To brave the thickening ills of life One glimpse of brighter skies Beyond the gathering mists To make this life worth while.

There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives

Lohengrin' to us ordinary mortals seemed something like the whistling of the wind through the keyholes of a cathedral, which has a dreamy charm for a little while, but by and by you long for the sound even of a street organ to rush in and break the

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it.

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

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.

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

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?