Have you ever read words that deeply touch your heart, making you feel things you couldn’t express yourself? George Eliot, a wonderful writer, had a special gift for creating such powerful quotes.
Her words have the power to inspire, make us think, and understand life better.
In this article, we’ll explore some of George Eliot quotes and discover the timeless wisdom they hold. From love and friendship to society and self-discovery, her quotes offer valuable insights that resonate with people of all ages.
Let’s dive into George Eliot’s quotes, where each sentence reveals something profound and encourages us to understand life better.
Famous George Eliot Quotes
It will never rain roses: When we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
A dull mind … is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which an inference started was purely problematic.
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
There was … a dreamy feeling that this child was somehow a message come to him from that far-off life.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
As the child’s mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory.
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
The love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
It seemed to him that the Power in which he had vainly trusted among the streets and in the prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge.
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
The money’s gone I don’t know where, and this is come from I don’t know where.
There are many victories worse than a defeat.
Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.
Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
It’s natural he should be disappointed at not having any children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for, and he always counted so on making a fuss with ‘em when they were little.
To have sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a willful self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie therein.
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
There are debts we can’t pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by.
And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in.
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
Everything comes to light … sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out.
There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
In the old days … angels … took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction … the hand may be a little child’s.
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
George Eliot Quotes Self-Discovery & Life
And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better.
Every man’s work … tends … to become an end in itself … to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories?
Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.
Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken.
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
Perhaps there was hardly a person in the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours.
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.
To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection.
It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
Somebody put a drop of Mr. Casaubon’s blood under a magnifying glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses.
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state.
The weaver’s hand had known the touch of hard-won money even before the palm had grown to its full breadth; for twenty years, mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil.
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
That modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing — not themselves but — all their neighbors.
It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crop.
He would on no account have exchanged those coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces.
It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilette, and never see the great soul in a man’s face.
It’s them as take advantage that get advantage i’ this world.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
I mean, marriage drinks up all of 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.
Marriage, like religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward requirement.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
We do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual.
A maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it.
There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
In every parting, there is an image of death.
It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her.
We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to each other?
A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.
A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.
Be courteous, be obliging, but don’t give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade.
This young creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary.
For my part, I am very sorry for him.
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
Brief Introduction of George Eliot
George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, a renowned English novelist and poet. Eliot is best known for her novels, including “Middlemarch,” “The Mill on the Floss,” and “Silas Marner,” which are considered classics of English literature. George Eliot’s works often explored themes of rural life, social change, and the complexities of human nature.
Here are some interesting and unknow facts about George Eliot:
- George Eliot’s real name was Mary Ann Evans. She used a pen name to be taken more seriously as a writer during a time when female authors faced challenges in gaining recognition.
- She was born on November 22, 1819, in the countryside of England. The countryside influenced her writing about rural life and nature.
- Despite being known for her novels, George Eliot began her writing career as a translator and editor, working on various literary and philosophical texts.
- Some people didn’t like George Eliot’s ideas or personal choices. But she stayed true to herself and kept writing.
- “Middlemarch” is considered one of the best English novels ever. It talks about society and people’s dreams.
FAQs on George Eliot
What was George Eliot’s best quote?
One of George Eliot’s best quotes is: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
What was the famous line from Middlemarch?
The famous line from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch is: “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.”
What is the philosophy of George Eliot?
George Eliot’s philosophy can be described as a combination of moral realism, humanism, and ethical responsibility, emphasizing the interconnectedness of individuals and society and the importance of empathy and understanding.
