Quotes from George Eliot

The devil tempts us not; 'tis we who tempt him, beckoning his skill with opportunity.

On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.

What do we live for, if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Still, I repeat, there was a general impression that Lydgate was something rather more uncommon than any general practitioner in Middlemarch. And

think that the rare Englishmen who have this gesture are never of the heavy type— for fear of any lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller errors of men (themselves inclusive). The

The lines and lights of the human countenance are like other symbols,–not always easy to read without a key.

People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes;

It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial.

The blessed work of helping the world forward happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.

T]he Meyricks, whose various knowledge had been acquired by the irregular foraging to which clever girls have usually been reduced...

That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing to try for. If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for. Some can be happy. I seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most wretched. I can hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if that feeling had not come to me to make strength.

Es doloroso oír decir que algo es muy hermoso y no ser capaz de apreciarlo... como la ceguera cuando otras personas hablan del color del cielo. - Hay muchas cosas en la apreciación del arte que dependen de gustos adquiridos (...). El arte es un lenguaje muy antiguo con muchos estilos artificiosos y a veces el principal placer que se obtiene surge del hecho mismo de reconocerlos (p.230).

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

She was not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon.

Do take my arm, he said, in a low tone, as if it were a secret. There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination.

L'influsso della sua esistenza su quelli che le stavano attorno fu incalcolabilmente ampio: perché il bene a venire del mondo dipende in parte da azioni di portata non storica; e se le cose per voi e per me, non vanno cosí male come sarebbe stato possibile, lo dobbiamo in parte a tutti quelli che vissero con fede una vita nascosta e riposano in tombe che nessuno visita.

It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite transiently,–on a mile's journey, perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.

El fracaso después de una larga perseverancia tiene mucha más grandeza que no haber realizado nunca un esfuerzo lo bastante intenso para que luego quepa hablar de fracaso (p.247).

How does the law stand, eh, Hawley?" "Nothing to be done there," said Mr. Hawley. "I looked into it for Sprague. You'd only break your nose against a damned judge's decision." "Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller. "So far as practice is concerned the attempt is an absurdity.

I should see how it was possible to lead a grand life here—now—in England.

just as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think of his being sent to the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy who had stolen turnips. In

Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in.

Three words have often been used as the trumpet-call of men - the words God, Immortality, Duty - pronounced with terrible earnestness. How inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable was the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.

Mrs. Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.