Quotes from George Eliot

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

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

I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so. Disagreeable is a word that describes your feelings and not my actions.

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.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.

I protest against any absolute conclusion.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

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

Few things hold the perception more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say

Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me—my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker.

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.

I flutter all ways, and fly in none.

She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.

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.

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.

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

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

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