The quotations of

George Eliot

English novelist, essayist, poet and journalist

1819–1880

46 quotes, most often on Emotion, Pride and Hope.

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. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book II: Old and Young, Chapter XXIn context
- Emotion
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book IV: Three Love Problems, Chapter XLIIIn context
- Character
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book VI: The Widow and the Wife, Chapter LVIn context
- Hope
- Youth
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book VIII: Sunset and Sunrise, Chapter LXXIIIn context
- Courage
There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), FinaleIn context
- Character
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.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), FinaleIn context
- History
- Virtue
Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book I: Miss Brooke, Chapter IIn context
- Comedy
In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.
Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book III: Waiting for Death, Chapter XXXIIn context
- Failure
Every man’s work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
Silas Marner (1861), Part I, Chapter IIIn context
- Work
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature
Silas Marner (1861), Part I, Chapter IIIIn context
- Good & Evil
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
Silas Marner (1861), Part I, Chapter XIIIn context
- Emotion
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.
Silas Marner (1861), Part I, Chapter XIVIn context
- Children
- Hope
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book First: Boy and Girl, Chapter VIn context
- Children
- Emotion
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it
The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book First: Boy and Girl, Chapter VIn context
- Nature
- Youth
War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a “public.”
The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book Second: School-Time, Chapter IVIn context
- War & Peace

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