Quotes from George Eliot

while the expression on her pale face and in her burning eyes was what would have suited a woman enduring a wrong which she might not resent, but would probably revenge.

The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even over the present quickening in the general pace of things:

Wishes are held to be ominous; according to which belief the order of the world is so arranged that if you have an impious objection to a squint, your offspring is more likely to be born with one; also, that if you happen to desire a squint, you would not get it. This desponding view of probability the hopeful entirely reject, taking their wishes as good and sufficient security for all kinds of fulfilment.

I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.

The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. -Book 6, chapter 9

What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time.

have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom.

It's never too late to be what you might have been.

When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes–one is conscious of her presence.

Let us bind love with duty; for duty is the love of law; and law is the nature of the Eternal.' So we bound ourselves.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives," he interposed, in his measured way. "Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

There's a thing I've got i' my head, said Mr. Tulliver at last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked steadfastly at his companion.

Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. —Justice Shallow.

The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.

Let the music which can take the possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more - what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its absence?

Heat is a great agent and a useful word, but considered as a means of explaining the universe it requires an extensive knowledge of differences; and as a means of explaining character sensitiveness is in much the same predicament.

Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies, said Mrs. Poyser; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.

I protest against all our interest, all our effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and will know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect. In

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea," which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

For my part I have some fellow-feeling with Dr. Sprague: one's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

That is a beautiful mysticism - it is a - ' 'Please not to call it by any name,' said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. 'You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out, and cannot part with it.

For my part I am very sorry for him. It

The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling business.

The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.