Quotes from George Eliot

Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)

The only conscience we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims. That's my test–which side is injured? I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous upholder of the wrong.

Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?—in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely;

But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's plan in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe.

But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon, said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardor, character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.

Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on.

Having made his clerical toilet with due care in the morning, he was prepared only for those amenities of life which were suited to the well-adjusted stiff cravat of the period, and to a mind weighted with unpublished matter.

But womanly, I hope, said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs. Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.

Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted upon. Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had to put up with a good deal because of me.

There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men... it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid... knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversations of his elders he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and appear a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.

On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings.

The story can be told without many words.

Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humor?

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 heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating.

for the human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.

Rosamond being one of those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless.

To think with pleasure of his niece's husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one thing—to make a Liberal speech was another thing; and it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

It's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest - one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all - the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n - they do, that they do...