George Eliot Quotes - Page 11

• In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

  George Eliot

  Memories, Past, Men

  George Eliot (1859). “Adam Bede”, p.262, London

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• Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

  George Eliot

  Life, Death, Kings

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.401

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  "Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.

  George Eliot

  Heaven, Atheism, Helping

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot's Life, Complete: Top Novelist Focus”, p.144, 谷月社

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• Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

  George Eliot

  Life, Writing, Letters

  Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor, 8 June 1856

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• A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?

  George Eliot

  Girl, Believe, Weather

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola: In Two Volumes”, p.76

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• Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.

  George Eliot

  Mind, May, Invisible

  "Oh May I Join the Choir Invisible" l. 1 (1867)

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• There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles.

  George Eliot

  Men, Order, Style

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.67, Wordsworth Editions

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• Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.

  George Eliot

  Dog, Wall, Imagination

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.59, Wordsworth Editions

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• It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.

  George Eliot

  Art, Sky, People

  George Eliot (2016). “Middlemarch: Top Novelist Focus”, p.183, 谷月社

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• In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.

  George Eliot

  Luxury, Mind, Looks

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.728, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The beauty of a lovely woman is like music ... the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace.

  George Eliot

  Moving, Lovely, Arms

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.244, Wordsworth Editions

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• There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.

  George Eliot

  Infidelity, Deception, Deceit

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.1538, Delphi Classics

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• The best travel is that which one can take by one's own fireside. In memory or imagination.

  George Eliot

  Travel, Memories, Imagination

  George Eliot, Elma Fraser Stuart (1909). “Letters from George Eliot to Elma Stuart, 1872-1880”

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• I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

  George Eliot

  Love, Life, Valentines Day

  George Eliot, John Walter Cross (2010). “George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals”, p.258, Cambridge University Press

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• History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.

  George Eliot

  History, Repeats, Knows

  George Eliot (1884*). “Silas Marner, The lifted veil, and Brother Jacob. Scenes of clerical life”

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• I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.

  George Eliot

  Mirrors, Dust, Mind

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.124, Wordsworth Editions

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• Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

  George Eliot

  Book, Order, Names

  George Eliot (2016). “Impressions of Theophrastus Such: Top Novelist Focus”, p.7, 谷月社

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• Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

  George Eliot

  Real, Lying, Heart

  Middlemarch bk. 2, ch. 20 (1871 - 1872)

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• The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

  George Eliot

  Beauty, Eggs, Hopeful

  George Eliot (1910). “Works of George Eliot”

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• Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.

  George Eliot

  Death, Years, Shadow

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6956, Delphi Classics

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• I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson.

  George Eliot

  Life, Long, Lessons

  George Eliot (2016). “The Mill On The Floss”, p.375, George Eliot

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• These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

  George Eliot

  Stupid, Compassion, People

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.129, Wordsworth Editions

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• But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for 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.

  George Eliot

  Life, Numbers, Obscurity

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch - A Study of Provincial Life -”, p.367, Read Books Ltd

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• Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.

  George Eliot

  Common, Mist, Walks

  George Eliot (189?). “The Spanish gypsy”

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• It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons.

  George Eliot

  Mother, Reading, Son

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.1728, Delphi Classics

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