George Eliot

Novelist, Poet, Journalist

George Eliot was a pioneering English novelist known for her deep psychological insight and exploration of social issues in works like Middlemarch.

Born
November 22, 1819
Died
December 22, 1880
Quotes
1K
Rank
#75

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George Eliot Novelist, Poet, Journalist
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"I don't remember ever being see-saw, when I'd made my mind up that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow creatures worse off instead o' better."

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"The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on."

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"Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it."

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"In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in."

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"For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them."

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"We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves"

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"Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers."

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"Surely there was something taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know?"

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"She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth."

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"and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony."

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"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."

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"Few things hold the perception more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say"

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"Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision."

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"Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope."

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"When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his."

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"I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is."

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"Shepperton Church was a very different looking building five-and-twenty years ago. To be sure, its substantial stone tower looks at you through its intelligent eye, the clock, with the friendly expression of former days; but in everything else what changes!"

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"With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader."

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"The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence."

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"I take a dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft."

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