Quotes from George Eliot

Love-making and marriage—how could they now be the imagery in which poor Gwendolen's deepest attachment could spontaneously clothe itself? Mighty Love had laid his hand upon her; but what had he demanded of her? Acceptance of rebuke—the hard task of self-change—confession—endurance. If she cried toward him, what then? She cried as the child cries whose little feet have fallen backward—cried to be taken by the hand, lest she should lose herself.

By George Eliot   Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:   There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires   That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,   Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible   As exhalations laden with slow death,   And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys   Breathes pallid pestilence.

I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract.

Were uneasiness of conscience measured by extent of crime, human history had been different, and one should look to see the contrivers of greedy wars and the mighty marauders of the money-market in one troop of self-lacerating penitents with the meaner robber and cut-purse and the murderer that doth his butchery in small with his own hand.

thinking of its wings and never flying.

Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

Do not think of me sorrowfully on your wedding-day. I have remembered your words—that I may live to be one of the best of women, who make others glad that they were born. I do not yet see how that can be, but you know better than I. If it ever comes true, it will be because you helped me. I only thought of myself, and I made you grieve. It hurts me now to think of your grief. You must not grieve any more for me. It is better—it shall be better with me because I have known you.

I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away.

One can begin so many things with a new person!— even begin to be a better man.

am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me.

There are certain animals to which tenacity of position is a law of life,–they can never flourish again, after a single wrench: and there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a law of life,–they can only sustain humiliation so long as they can refuse to believe in it, and, in their own conception, predominate still.

incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic.

You are a poem- and that is to be the best part of a poet- what makes up the poet's consciousness in his best moods, said Will, showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the spring-time and other endless renewals.

for anything he knew his brains lay in small bags at his temples

a horsewhipping is not likely to be paid for with sugar-plums.

his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the more intensely. He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.

She says, he is a great soul.—A great bladder for dried peas to rattle in! said Mrs. Cadwallader.

was something very new and strange in his life that these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him.

No one in Middle march was likely to have such a notion of Lydgate's past as has here been faintly shadowed, and indeed the respectable townsfolk there were not more given than mortals generally to any eager attempt at exactness in the representation to themselves of what did not come under their own senses.

H]aving early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part.

The rain is quite over now. I told Mr Brooke not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles. I shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet grass. I like that.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are."   Bulstrode's

Impossible, said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.

Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and wagging his tail. She leaned her back against the window-frame, and laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances.