Quotes from George Eliot

But, for the point of wisdom, I would choose / To know the mind that stirs between the wings / Of bees...

I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dulness of the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good.

I'm very fond of you, Maggie; I shall never forget you," said Philip, "and when I'm very unhappy, I shall always think of you, and wish I had a sister with dark eyes, just like yours.

for me to help him," said Dorothea, ardently. "You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for you in my pocket." Mr. Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, "There is not too much

They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste. Evidently

Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life--a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them?

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot?

The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula.

But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I'd set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing.

The majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own judgement

Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others

Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke

Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match.' 'No, indeed, father. I don't love him because he is a fine match.' 'What for, then?' 'Oh dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.

There was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her previsions: she cared about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that was to pay for them.

it is seldom a medical man has true religious views—there is too much pride of intellect.

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.

there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband!

A woman must not force her heart—she'll do a man no good by that.

He knew quite well that my mind was half absent, yet he liked to talk to me in this way; for don't we talk of our hopes and our projects even to dogs and birds, when they love us?

I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.

O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being the freshest modern instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,–that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else?

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of divine power against evil- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.