Quotes from George Eliot

Do you know, I envy you that,' Sir James said, as they continued walking at the rather brisk pace set by Dorothea. 'I don't quite understand what you mean.' 'Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons. I know when I like people. But about other matters, do you know, I have often a difficulty in deciding. One hears very sensible things said on opposite sides.

We read, indeed, that the walls of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets,39 but we nowhere hear that those trumpets were hoarse and feeble. Doubtless they were trumpets that gave forth clear ringing tones, and sent a mighty vibration through brick and mortar. But the oratory of the Rev. Amos resembled rather a Belgian railway-horn, which shows praiseworthy intentions inadequately fulfilled.

eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite.

Boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

I rather like a haughty manner. I cannot endure a rattling young man.

Just a month from this day, on the twentieth of September, 1850, I shall be sitting in this chair, in this study, at ten o' clock at night, longing to die, weary of incessant insight and foresight, without delusions and without hope.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty;

Proceeding by loops and zig-zags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking

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. "Why

Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath towards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came with the vibrations from a woman's glance.

so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness rather than beauty.

I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad,—I should be sorry for him to be a raskill,—but a sort o' engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool.

The half-indignant remonstrance that vibrated in Deronda's voice came, as often happens, from the habit of inward argument with himself rather than from severity toward Gwendolen: but it had a more beneficial effect on her than any soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent rebellion of complaint; and to be roused into self-judgment is comparative activity. For the moment she felt like a shaken child—shaken out of its wailing into awe.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them.

I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence and never know anything greater.

People who seem to enjoy their ill-temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves.

No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality

I never felt that I had enough music, - I wanted more instruments playing together; I wanted voices to be fuller and deeper.

There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present.

Sometimes it upset her gravity.

our lives would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they could be put on the wall.