George Eliot Quotes - Page 31

• What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

  George Eliot

  Tragedy, Needs, Gone

  George Eliot (1873). “Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot”, p.101

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• One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

  George Eliot

  Ideas, Looks, Way

  George Eliot (1869). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.158

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• I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

  George Eliot

  Mean, Blessing, Thinking

  George Eliot (2004). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life”, p.400, Broadview Press

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• When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.

  George Eliot

  Doors, Experts, Tools

  George Eliot (1860). “The Mill on the Floss”, p.22

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• How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he's chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him. . . .

  George Eliot

  Men, Decision, Age

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• Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. Suffering can be likened to a baptism - the passing over the threshold of pain and grief and anguish to claim a new state of being.

  George Eliot

  Pain, Grief, Baptism

  "Adam Bede". Book by George Eliot, 1859.

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• Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.

  George Eliot

  Deeds, Action, Fetters

  George Eliot (1872). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. Book 1, Miss Brooke. 1[,1]”, p.52

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• What can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye for beauty, and makes sweet-scented ease an oppression?

  George Eliot

  Beauty, Sweet, Heart

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3376, Delphi Classics

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• Things are achieved when they are well begun. The perfect archer calls the deer his own While yet the shaft is whistling.

  George Eliot

  Archer, Perfect, Deer

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.439

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• All who remember their childhood remember the strange vague sense, when some new experience came, that everything else was going to be changed, and that there would be no lapse into the old monotony.

  George Eliot

  New Experiences, Childhood, Would Be

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.1676, ShandonPress

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• It is strange how deeply colours seem to penetrate one, like scent.

  George Eliot

  Color, Scent, Strange

  George Eliot (1852). “Middlemarch”, p.15

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• What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

  George Eliot

  Opportunity, Air, Satisfaction

  George Eliot (1858). “Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.24

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• Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow.

  George Eliot

  Men, Vegetables, Desire

  George Eliot (1869). “Silas Marner, and Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.168

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• Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.

  George Eliot

  Dog, Sorry, Dumb

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.470, ShandonPress via PublishDrive

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• Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.

  George Eliot

  Slavery, May, Young

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.260, Penguin

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• Fairy folk a-listening Hear the seed sprout in the spring, And for music to their dance Hear the hedgerows wake from trance, Sap that trembles into buds Sending little rhythmic floods Of fairy sound in fairy ears. Thus all beauty that appears Has birth as sound to finer sense And lighter-clad intelligence.

  George Eliot

  Spring, Listening, Sound

  George Eliot (2006). “Daniel Deronda: Easyread Edition”, p.346, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• That sort of reputation which precedes performance [is] often the larger part of a man's fame.

  George Eliot

  Men, Reputation, Fame

  George Eliot (2009). “Middlemarch: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.153, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Whatever be thy fate today, Remember, this will pass away!

  George Eliot

  Fate, Passing Away, Today

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• The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain-- The grandest death, to die in vain--for love Greater than sways the forces of the world!

  George Eliot

  Jesus, Should Have, Coward

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.4137, Delphi Classics

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• Folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done.

  George Eliot

  Luck, Mind, Use

  George Eliot (2016). “Adam Bede”, p.143, George Eliot

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• Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action; breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.

  George Eliot

  Strong, Fire, Soul

  GEORGE ELIOT (1868). “THE SPANISH GYPSY”, p.244

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• I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of.

  George Eliot

  Thinking, Understanding, Experience

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.1192, ShandonPress

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• Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.

  George Eliot

  Dream, Men, Vision

  Robert Coles, George Eliot, George Orwell, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope (2007). “Political Leadership: Stories of Power and Politics from Literature and Life”, p.19, Modern Library

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• Love supreme defies all sophistry.

  George Eliot

  Love, Sophistry, Supreme

  GEORGE ELIOT (1868). “THE SPANISH GYPSY”, p.213

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• The worst of misery
  Is when a nature framed for noblest things
  Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
  And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
  Gasping from out the shallows.

  George Eliot

  Air, Joy, Misery

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.444

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