George Eliot

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.

Men Thinking People Life Love Literature
Born
November 22, 1819
Died
December 22, 1880
Quotes
1K
Rank
#75

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George Eliot quotes (page 33 of 51)

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George Eliot Novelist, Poet, Journalist
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"the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles. ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion."

Christian Attitude Lying
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"One of the tortures of jealousy is, that it can never turn away its eyes from the thing that pains it."

Jealousy Pain Eye
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"There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs."

Men Race Imagination
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"Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger."

Safe Danger Toms
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"Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies."

Thinking Simple People
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"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."

Mean Men Imagination
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"The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic."

Mind Desire Arriving
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"Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."

Real Lying Heart
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"What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness."

Achieve Should Resolve
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"Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice."

Selfish Sacrifice Judgment
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"Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people."

Hurt People Made
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"Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.' I am not aware of it. 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... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me."

Girl Falling In Love Love You
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"The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes."

Men Knowing Soul
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"Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all."

Enemy Wavering Belief
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"The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama."

Memories Mood Scenery
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"People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are."

Thinking People Neighbor
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"Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than - than those we were married to, it would be no use. I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear, but it murders our marriage, and then the marriage stays with us like a murder, and everything else is gone."

Mean Giving Would Be
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