Quotes by George Eliot

Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

She was no longer wresting with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.

Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of ones 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.

If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Oh, you dear good father! cried Mary, putting her hands round her father´s neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed. I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world.Nonsense, child; you´ll think your husband better.Impossible, said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone, husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.

He was unique to her among men because he’s impressed her as being not her admirer her superior. In some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience as one woman who’s nature is an object of reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man.

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

I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.

How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men’s dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for.

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.

Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other peoples sorrow.

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.

For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?