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George Eliot

George Eliot Quotes

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Famous George Eliot Quotes

“It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.”

LoveSufferingGrowthSorrowEmpathy
Book:Adam Bede
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“Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it... There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy.”

LoveBeautyFeeling
Book:Adam Bede
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“She saw the years to come stretch before her like an autumn afternoon, filled with resigned memory. Life to her could never more have any eagerness; it was a solemn service of gratitude and patient effort. She walked in the presence of unseen witnesses—of the Divine love that had rescued her, of the human love that waited for its eternal repose until it had seen her endure to the end.”

LoveGrief
Book:Scenes of Clerical Life
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“I suppose we faulty creatures can never feel so much for the irreproachable as for those who are bruised in the struggle with their own faults. It is a very ancient story, that of the lost sheep--but it comes up afresh every day." "That is a way of speaking--it is not acted upon, it is not real," said Gwendolen, bitterly. "You admire Miss Lapidoth because you think her blameless, perfect. And you know you would despise a woman who had done something you thought very wrong." "That would depend entirely upon her own view of what she had done," said Deronda. "You would be satisfied if she were very wretched, I suppose," said Gwendolen, impetuously. "No, not satisfied--full of sorrow for her. It was not a mere way of speaking. I did not mean to say that the finer nature is not more adorable; I meant that those who would be comparatively uninteresting beforehand may become worthier of sympathy when they do something that awakens in them a keen remorse. Lives are enlarged in different ways. I dare say some would never get their eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of their own actions. And when they are suffering in that way one must care for them more than, for the comfortably self-satisfied.”

LoveRegretDamaged Goods
Book:Daniel Deronda
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“There was a voice speaking in Caterina's mind to which she had never yet given vent. That voice said continually. 'Why did he make me love him—why did he let me know he loved me, if he knew all the while that he couldn't brave everything for my sake?' Then love answered, 'He was led on by the feeling of the moment, as you have been, Caterina; and now you ought to help him to do what is right.' Then the voice rejoined, 'It was a slight matter to him. He doesn't much mind giving you up. He will soon love that beautiful woman, and forget a poor little pale thing like you.”

LoveC
Book:Scenes of Clerical Life
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“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”

LoveNatureChildhood
Book:The Mill on the Floss
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“Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty,--how could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.”

LoveMarriage
Book:Middlemarch
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“Rosamond’s discontent in her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for self-suppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her husband; but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm which diverted her ennui. She constructed a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her life: Will Ladislaw was always to be a bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and have an understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be sending out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes.”

LoveHumorMarriageIllusionFlirting
Book:Middlemarch
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“Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.”

IfsLoveFirstsHeartTwoSoulYoungGirlAsksSimpleLove IsWonderMorningLove YouYouthSweetSummerTwentiesOpeningHidingGlancesCurvesBudSimple ThingsRaptureRippleVelvetSeventeenPeachesHiding PlaceSweet Girl
Book:Adam Bede: Top Novelist Focus
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“Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower.”

LoveHumansSoulProcessInfluenceFlowerLogicBlessedSeedsTinyMysteriousTallBroadsStemLeafsHuman SoulGlowingAlgebra
Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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“Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.”

LoveMadeYoungJoyBeliefDarkVisionBlueMeetingsFingersLipsPhrasesSubtleRaysYearningCheeksSpontaneousYoung LoveUnfinishedMomentaryLove MakingCompletenessIndefinableOrbs
Book:Middlemarch: Easyread Edition
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“Great Love has many attributes, and shrines For varied worshippers, but his force divine Shows most its many-named fulness in the man Whose nature multitudinously mixed-- Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought-- Resists all easy gladness, all content Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul Flooded with consciousness of good that is Finds life one bounteous answer.”

MenLoveSoulShowsForceEasyAnswersConsciousnessDivineHe ManImpulseAttributesQuestioningGreat LoveMysticRaptureArdentGladnessShrinesWorshippersGrappling
Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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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.”

WorldLoveLifeMindHeartEnoughLightSilenceFlowerSpeechDearGravesRealmsNot SureSilence IsValentine's DayGift Of Love
Book:George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals
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“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

LovePersonsFeelingsHandsTogetherFriendshipKindnessKnowingRelationshipFriendsComfortSafeMy FriendsBreathsWordsSmileBlowGenerosityFaithfulGrainPouringMy FriendshipLove RelationshipPeople In Your LifeFunny RelationshipAbout FriendshipLove And FriendshipFriendship LoveBeing TogetherGreat FriendshipFemale FriendshipHappy First Fathers DayFriendship GardenFriendship OverFathers Day InspirationalBeing A Good FriendCute Fathers DayFaithful FriendsSiftingInspirational RelationshipEasy FriendshipFemale FriendsFriendships And RelationshipsTimes With FriendsWords With Friends
Author:George Eliot
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“Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.”

LoveFirstsBookRememberTurnsVoiceHoursMorningSubjectsListeningLipsEveningSatVolumeOur LoveTalkersStools
Book:Four Novels of George Eliot
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“May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.”

WorldLoveMaySoulHeavenLove IsSweetPureMusic IsInvisibleIntenseCrueltyCupsGenerosityGenerousAgonyBegetsChoirGladnessPure LoveArdorDiffusion
Book:Armgart: The Spanish Gypsy, and Other Poems
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“What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”

LoveLifeFeelsHumansTwoSoulMemoriesFamilyMarriageGreaterRelationshipCommunicationRomanticDistanceSilentFlamesMatesWeddingSoulmateI Love YouHuman SoulLong DistanceUnspeakableDistance RelationshipWhat Is LoveLong Distance RelationshipMarriage LoveTime And LoveGreat MarriageRelationships With OthersWedding CeremonyHealthy RelationshipGreater ThingsRomantic Love YouYour SoulmateWedding VowLong Distance LoveLasting MarriageMarriage ProblemsHappy RelationshipTwo SoulsLong Distance RelationWedding PoetrySoulmate LoveGood Long Distance RelationshipMy Soul MateLong Distance Relationship LoveDistance LoveLove And DistanceGreat WeddingStrong Long Distance RelationshipLove And Long DistanceLong Distance True LoveMy SoulmateSad Long Distance RelationshipSweet Long Distance RelationshipRomantic MarriageYour My SoulmateMarriage SpeechCute RomanticFlames And LoveBridal ShowerReal ConnectionCouple LoveInspirational SoulmateSoulmates Best Friends50th Anniversary
Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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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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