Quotes from George Eliot

our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.

Apparently the mingled thread in the web of their life was so curiously twisted together that there could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it.

The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair.

Things out o' natur niver thrive: God A'mighty doesn't like 'em.

Modesty, not temper.

Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter,–she was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain. This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the present, without those chill, eating thoughts of the past and the future.

A husband would not let you have your plans.

But the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.

dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't under stand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters that she married me for my ugliness—it was so various and amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence.

Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and colour with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.

the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not

only in another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released. Lydgate's advice

The Rubicon, we know, was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay entirely in certain invisible conditions.

I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favorite of Heaven because I am not a favorite with men.

For power finds its place in lack of power;               Advance

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self-denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a thing that you know to be wrong.

parlour on the left being reserved for the more select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the double pleasure of conviviality and condescension.

he was made from excellent human dough

And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.

You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.