George Eliot quotes - page 15

George Eliot was an English novelist, poet, and journalist, celebrated for her insightful works such as "Middlemarch" and "Silas Marner." Her real name was Mary Ann Evans, and she adopted a male pen name to ensure her writings were taken seriously. She remains a towering figure in Victorian literature, known for her psychological depth and realism. Here are 538 of her quotes:

Sudden and near the trumpet's notes out-spread, And soon his eyes could see the metal flower, Shining upturned, out on the morning pour Its incense audible; could see a train From out the street slow-winding on the plain With lyres and cymbals, flutes and psalteries, While men, youths, maids, in concert sang to these With various throat, or in succession poured, Or in full volume mingled. But one word Ruled each recurrent rise and answering fall, As when the multitudes adoring call On some great name divine, their common soul, The common need, love, joy, that knits them in one whole. The word was "Jubal!"... "Jubal" filled the air, And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there, Creator of the choir, the full-fraught strain That grateful rolled itself to him again. The aged man adust upon the bank - Whom no eye saw - at first with rapture drank The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart, Felt, this was his own being's greater part, The universal joy once born in him.

George Eliot

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

George Eliot

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

George Eliot

May every soul that touches mine Be it the slightest contact Get therefrom some good Some little grace one kindly thought One aspiration yet unfelt One bit of courage For the darkening sky One gleam of faith To brave the thickening ills of life One glimpse of brighter skies Beyond the gathering mists To make this life worth while.

George Eliot

Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

George Eliot

We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.

George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.

George Eliot

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

George Eliot

To manage men, one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

George Eliot

It is easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

George Eliot

Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.

George Eliot

A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.

George Eliot

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

George Eliot

There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

George Eliot

Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.

George Eliot

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

George Eliot

Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.

George Eliot

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

George Eliot

I shall do everything it becomes me to do.

George Eliot

It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.

George Eliot

But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

George Eliot

A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.

George Eliot