Quotes from George Eliot

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.

God, immortality, duty - how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third.

The first condition of human goodness is something to love the second something to revere.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

A good horse makes short miles.

If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plainly dressed.

There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.

They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit.

I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now; everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.

'Tis what I love determines how I love.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

As leopard feels at home with leopard.

"Abroad," that large home of ruined reputations.

It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity.

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope.

But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?

He who rules must fully humor as much as he commands.