Quotes from George Eliot

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire

other, just as if it had been only yesterday when

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves:

He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James. "No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general preference for the best style of thing.

but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable.

Fred at six years old thought her the nicest girl in the world, making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut from an umbrella.

Humphrey finds everybody charming I never can get him to abuse Casaubon. He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by abusing everybody myself.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts — not to hurt others.        

What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch," as Mary called herself? It was certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confide in their want of beauty).

For a long while she had been oppressed by the indefiniteness which hung in her mind, like a thick summer haze, over all her desire to make her life greatly effective.

Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.

Certain strains of music affect me so strangely - I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.

and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family dinner, and darned all the stockings.

to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

I cannot imagine myself without some opinion, but I wish to have good reasons for them.

It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them

Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable. At

It was a constant source of irritation to him that the public men on his side were, on the whole, not conspicuously better than the public men on the other side.

We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

I only thought of myself, and I made you grieve. It hurts me now to think of your grief. You must not grieve anymore for me. It is better_it shall be better with me because I have known you.

The early days of an acquaintance almost always have this importance for us, and fill up a larger space in our memory than longer subsequent periods, which have been less filled with discovery and new impressions.

In their death they were not divided.