Quotes by George Eliot

About George Eliot:

Mary Ann Evans is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.

George Eliot

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

George Eliot

Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, a...

George Eliot

Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.

George Eliot

It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.

George Eliot

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

George Eliot

What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?

George Eliot

A man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass.

George Eliot

In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.

George Eliot

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

George Eliot

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

George Eliot

I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.

George Eliot

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should ...

George Eliot

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.

George Eliot

Don't judge a book by its cover

George Eliot

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the sam...

George Eliot

Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.

George Eliot

But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the out-door world, for he meant to light up the home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-door colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food: ...

George Eliot

It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite.

George Eliot

There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows--in the ...

George Eliot

It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive, when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.

George Eliot

Author Bio

  • NameGeorge Eliot
  • DescriptionEnglish novelist, journalist and translator
  • AliasesMary Anne Evans; Mary Ann Evans; Marian Evans
  • BornNovember 22, 1819
  • DiedDecember 22, 1880
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionNovelist; Translator; Philosopher; Writer; Poet
  • WorksThe Mill On The Floss; Silas Marner; Middlemarch; Daniel Deronda