Quotes from George Eliot

Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to make her so.

Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle Featherstone's soul, though in reality half what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own inclinations. The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings — that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigor of irresistible day.

Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright The coming pest with border fortresses, Or catch your carp with subtle argument. All force is twain in one: cause is not cause Unless effect be there; and action's self Must needs contain a passive. So command Exists but with obedience.

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

What's broke can never be whole again.

To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action of concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue [...]

The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe.

Not at all, said Dorothea, with the most open kindness. I like you very much. Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have been of more importance if he had been disliked. He said nothing, but looked dull, not to say sulky.

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them.

But we are frightened at much that is not strictly conceivable.

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?

The place where you are is the one where my mind must live, wherever I might travel.

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

He longed now to have the sort of apprenticeship to life which would not shape him too definitely, and rob him of the choice that might come from a free growth.

There was no delivering himself from his cage, however;

Mrs. Davilow have willingly let fall a hint of the aerial castle-building which she had

He yearned with a poet's yearning for the wide sky, the far-reaching vista of bridges, the tender and fluctuating lights on the water which seems to breathe with a life that can shiver and mourn, be comforted and rejoice.

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them

How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done–how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful?

I want that sort of thing — not ideas, you know, but a way of putting them.

indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.

I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our lives would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they could be put on the wall." Dorothea

As to his religious notions—why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his incantations. Very