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George Eliot: 600 quotes53 likes

“A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habbit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into impartiality; and that prejudice in favour of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876)

“So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Source: Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Chapter 27 (at page 219)

“So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshness — everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.”

George Eliot

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 3 (at page 24)

“[Mr Johnson] "You know what a Tory is – one who wants to drive the working men as he'd drive cattle."”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Source: Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Chapter 11 (at page 121)

“One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“Certain winds will make men's temper bad.”

George Eliot

Book 1
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

“If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it…”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“His smile is sweetened by his gravity.”

George Eliot

Book 1
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

“no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods”

George Eliot

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 9 (at page 71)

“People who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

“Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.”

George Eliot book Scenes of Clerical Life

" Janet's Repentance http://classiq.net/george-eliot/janets-repentance/index.html" Ch. 6 <br class="br">Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)

“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.”

George Eliot

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 14, end of (at page 131)

“Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“But these things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer – committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed in no human ear.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Introductory chapter (at page 11-12 – page numbers per the 'Wordsworth Classics' edition 1997.)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

“If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.”

George Eliot

Letter to Charles Bray (5 July 1859)

“Lamech's sons were heroes of their race:
Jubal, the eldest, bore upon his face
The look of that calm river-god, the Nile,
Mildly secure in power that needs not guile.”

George Eliot

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

“That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled.”

George Eliot

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 3 (at page 28)

“There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876)