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George Eliot

George Eliot Quotes

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Famous George Eliot Quotes

“Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.”

WorldMayMadeSoulSelfMightActionLyingUniverseLiteratureExistenceMistakeEventsFiguresBearsAnxietyHarderMiserableFallenGentlemanIsolationTrapsVulgarConsolationInsignificantDiscontentGreat Souls
Book:Middlemarch
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“A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge.”

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Author:George Eliot
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“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?”

NeedsLife IsGoneOur LivesTragedyDisasterMortalsArtificialPrimitiveQuarrelsCalamityUnbeliefHarshness
Book:Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot
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“Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.”

MindMayTerribleIntegrityElementsConsequenceDeedsExcuseCertaintyConsideringConfinedFluctuation
Book:Four Novels of George Eliot
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“But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.”

ThinkingMenLoveShouldMayMatterCharacterFineDiseaseArgumentConstitutionInevitableFirmStrength Of CharacterPoxWitchery
Book:George Eliot Collection: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, and The Mill on the Floss
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“Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.”

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Book:Four Novels of George Eliot
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