Quotes from George Eliot

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

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

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

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.

What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!

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

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.

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.

If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must first make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

People talk of their motives in a cut and dried way. Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. I am not a monster but I have not felt exactly what other women feel, or say they feel, for fear of being thought unlike others.

Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than - than those we were married to, it would be no use. I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear, but it murders our marriage, and then the marriage stays with us like a murder, and everything else is gone.

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.

W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined to strengthen each other, to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories

A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts. —WORDSWORTH.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

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.

It's rather a strong check to one's self-complacency to find how much of one's right doing depends on not being in want of money.