George Eliot Quotes - Page 18

• The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.

  George Eliot

  Stranger, Wit

  George Eliot (1873). “Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot”, p.313

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• trouble always seems heavier when it is only one's thought and not one's bodily activity that is employed about it.

  George Eliot

  Worry, Trouble, Employed

  George Eliot (1955). “The George Eliot Letters: 1862-1868”

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• My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.

  George Eliot

  Book, Opinion, Delivering

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.398

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• All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

  George Eliot

  Writing, Errors, Furniture

  George Eliot (1955). “The George Eliot Letters: 1874-1877”

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• There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart.

  George Eliot

  Heart, Done, Bits

  George Eliot, Carol A. Martin (2008). “Adam Bede”, p.293, Oxford University Press

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• The impulse to confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and in our moments of spiritual need, the man to whom we have no tie but our common nature, seems nearer to us than mother, brother, or friend. Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, and those who sit with us at the same hearth, are often the farthest off from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good.

  George Eliot

  Spiritual, Mother, Brother

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3786, Delphi Classics

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• ... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.

  George Eliot

  Past, Confession, Form

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3792, Delphi Classics

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• I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.

  George Eliot

  Bitter

  George Eliot (1871). “Felix Holt, the Radical”, p.296

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• If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial.

  George Eliot

  Light, Looks, Thrill

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.90, Penguin

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• Receptiveness is a rare and massive power, like fortitude.

  George Eliot

  Fortitude, Massive

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3224, Delphi Classics

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• If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas.

  George Eliot

  Men, Ideas, Ifs

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.4079, ShandonPress

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• Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.

  George Eliot

  People, Enough, Born

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.447

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• ... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

  George Eliot

  Care, Precious Things, Increase

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.549

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• What is better than to love and live with the loved? -- But that must sometimes bring us to live with the dead; and this too turns at last into a very tranquil and sweet tie, safe from change and injury.

  George Eliot

  Sweet, Ties, Lasts

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6886, Delphi Classics

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• If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking.

  George Eliot

  Dog, Mean, Justice

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.590

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• ... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.

  George Eliot

  Morning, Joy, Soul

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.603

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• Letter-writing I imagine is counted as 'work' from which you must abstain, and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion that you will like to hear from me. You see, I have asked no questions, which are the torture-screws of correspondence. Hence you have nothing to answer.

  George Eliot

  Writing, Self, Answers

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.671

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• The perpetual mourner -- the grief that can never be healed -- is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning -- a new acquaintance with grief.

  George Eliot

  Grief, New Beginnings, Each Day

  George Eliot, John Walter Cross (2010). “George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals”, p.348, Cambridge University Press

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• I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves.

  George Eliot

  Pain, Feelings, Paradise

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6988, Delphi Classics

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• ... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.

  George Eliot

  Husband, Tired, Wife

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• But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?

  George Eliot

  May, Handsome, Lovable

  GEORGE ELIOT (1860). “ADAM BEDE”, p.152

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• To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

  George Eliot

  Stupidity, Social, Unendurable

  George Eliot (2007). “Middlemarch”, p.579, Collector's Library

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• We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.

  George Eliot

  Feelings, His Love, Speak

  George Eliot (1873). “Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot”, p.68

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• Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.

  George Eliot

  Love, Mystery, Divine

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot Collection: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, and The Mill on the Floss”, p.35, Xist Publishing

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• When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business - that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time.

  George Eliot

  Drama, Thinking, Foam

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6533, Delphi Classics

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