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The Complete Novels of George Eliot QUOTES

The Complete Novels of George Eliot QUOTES

1 " I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest — I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much. But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear him preach. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

2 " We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts — not to hurt others. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

3 " There’s nothing but what’s bearable as long as a man can work,” he said to himself; “the natur o’ things doesn’t change, though it seems as if one’s own life was nothing but change. The square o’ four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man’s miserable as when he’s happy; and the best o’ working is, it gives you a grip hold o’ things outside your own lot. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

4 " It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self — never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. Becoming "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

5 " The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. 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 , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

6 " Well, well, nobody’s perfect, but” — here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words—”what I am thinking of is — what it must be for a wife when she’s never sure of her husband, when he hasn’t got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That’s the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven’t been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

7 " If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

8 " But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity,— strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others,— prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

9 " O father," said Eppie, "what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody could be happier than we are. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

10 " In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

11 " How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near? "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

12 " But in that curious compound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients; "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

13 " lest, to so delicate an article as a lady’s temper, the slightest touch should do mischief. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

14 " without being obliged to dress itself in an elaborate costume of knowledge; "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

15 " that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

16 " if it were possible for a healthy female mind even to simulate "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

17 " if it were possible for a healthy female mind even to simulate respect for a husband’s hobby. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

18 " But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. The End "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

19 " It’s no mischief much while she’s a little un; but an over-’cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep,—she’ll fetch none the bigger price for that. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot

20 " Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And so it was with Arthur: Adam's judgment of him, Adam's grating words, disturbed his self-soothing arguments. "

― George Eliot , The Complete Novels of George Eliot