Quotes from George Eliot

I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.

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 divine power against evil- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable.

Fred at six years old thought her the nicest girl in the world, making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut from an umbrella.

It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them

In their death they were not divided.

Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)

But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's plan in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe.

Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on.

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.

for the human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.