Quotes from George Eliot

there are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them.

the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.

Miss Lucy's called the bell o' St. Ogg's, they say: that's a cur'ous word,' observed Mr. Pullet, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight.

But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me...That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers.

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think the emerald is more beautiful than any of them.

People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice.

When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritous, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune.

The existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life.

He has got no good red blood in his body, said Sir James. No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parenthesis, said Mrs. Cadwallader.

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband!