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

Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be master?

George Eliot

There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects.

George Eliot

mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gon...

George Eliot

...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and ...

George Eliot

Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.

George Eliot

I suppose it's the name: there's a deal in the name of a tune.

George Eliot

The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has ...

George Eliot

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

George Eliot

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when th...

George Eliot

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

George Eliot

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

George Eliot

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude...

George Eliot

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

George Eliot

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

George Eliot

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

George Eliot

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

George Eliot

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

George Eliot

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

George Eliot

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

George Eliot

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

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