Quotes from George Eliot

The very truth hath a color from the disposition of the utterer.

How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?

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

More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea

I don't deny that he was good. A man to be admired in a play–grand, with an iron will... But such men turn their wives and daughters into slaves. They would rule the world if they could; but not ruling the world, they throw all the weight of their will on the necks and souls of women. But nature sometimes thwarts them. My father had no other child than his daughter, and she was like himself.

But on safe opportunities, she had an indirect mode of making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her down from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that people were staring, not listening.

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge; it requires no accountability, no understanding.

But in that curious compound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients;

I am not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavourable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover

It is ever the trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn of chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeed equipped for no other. And it were well if all such could be admonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subject-matter lies entirely beyond their reach, from those of which the elements may be compassed by a narrow and superficial survey.

Don't judge a book by it's cover

the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.

it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

lest, to so delicate an article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should do mischief.

When land is gone and money's spent, Then learning is most excellent.

And remember that I am unchangeably yours: yours - not with selfish wishes - but with a devotion that excludes such wishes.

My business is to take care of life, and to do the best I can think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive. Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects

The Mill on the Floss was first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood and Sons of Edinburgh and London, while the first American edition was published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co, of New York. The work is considered to be Eliot's most autobiographical novel and her long time partner George Lewes reported that the process of writing the conclusion to such a personal tale caused her great emotional distress.

without being obliged to dress itself in an elaborate costume of knowledge;

But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us; and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust.

that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind.

Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn; I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows,–knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets.

Dear heart, dear heart! But you must have a cup o' tea first, child," said Mrs. Poyser, falling at once from the key of B with five sharps to the frank and genial C.