Quotes from George Eliot

Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.

And yet he felt as if something had happened to him with regard to her. There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.

Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?

We must not inquire too curiously into motives,' he interposed, in his measured way. 'Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air.

That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the course emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it.

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.

I cannot bear to think that any one should die and leave no love behind

Still — if I have read religious history aright — faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible — thank Heaven! — to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The

A lifeless embalmment of knowledge

What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

I trust that you will find in marriage a new fountain of duty and affection. Marriage is the only true and satisfactory sphere of a woman, and if your marriage with Mr Grandcourt should be happily decided upon, you will probably have an increasing power, both of rank and wealth, which may be used for the benefit of others. These considerations are something higher than romance.

We see human heroism broken into units and say, this unit did little—might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with.

Marner took her into his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and feeling were so confused with him, that if he had tried to give them utterance, he could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold--that the gold had turned into the child.

All minds, except such as are delivered from doubt by dulness of sensibility, must be subject to this recurring conflict where the many-twisted conditions of life have forbidden the fulfilment of a bond. For in strictness there is no replacing of relations: the presence of the new does not nullify the failure and breach of the old. Life has lost its perfection: it has been maimed; and until the wounds are quite scarred, conscience continually casts backward, doubting glances.

And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that.

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.

Oh, I'm not angry, except with the ways of the world. I do like to be spoken to as if I had common sense. I really often feel as if I understand more than I ever hear from young gentlemen who have been to college.

Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.

But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight — that in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

Who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rests in unvisited tombs.

it is a curious fact that the more sophisticated we become the simpler grows our speech.

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.

Who can tell what just criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation?

thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I said just now. Some 's got one way o' looking at things and some 's got another." "Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean