George Eliot Quotes

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness — in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.

It is better - it shall be better with me because I have known you.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

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

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

It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness..

Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!

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.

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

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.

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?