Quotes from George Eliot

Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbors' lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness. The

The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own.

My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky." —Keats After

He did not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won delight, which he had also regarded as an object to be found by search.

She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling.

I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonising on it.

But scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill:

There is no more to be said. Things cannot be altered, and who cares? It makes no difference to any one else what we do. We must try not to care ourselves. We must not give way. I dread giving way. Help me to he quiet.

But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence.

Hetty's mind was oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Lisbeth's ways; she could not care about them.

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self-- never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.

It was said of him, that Lydgate could do anything he liked, but he had certainly not yet liked to do anything remarkable. He was a vigorous animal with a ready understanding, but no spark had yet kindled in him an intellectual passion; knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversation of his elders, he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life.

In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years than it is at present

We can never give up longing and wishing while we are throughly alive

Don't ask me, Adam, Arthur said; I feel sometimes as if I should go mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that I couldn't get a full pardon—that I couldn't save her from that wretched fate of being transported—that I can do nothing for her all those years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any more.

her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth;

A character at unity with itself –that performs what it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible –is strong by its very negations.

For the egoism which enter into our theories does not effect their sincerity, rather the more our egoism is satisfied the more robust is our belief

Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly-carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel.

It's all I've got to think of now—to do my work well and make the world a bit better place for them as can enjoy it.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Mrs. Hackit declines cream; she has so long abstained from it with an eye to the weekly butter-money, that abstinence, wedded to habit, has begotten aversion.

Slander may be defeated by equanimity; but courageous thoughts will not pay your baker's hill, and fortitude is nowhere considered legal tender for beef.