Quotes from George Eliot

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black pudding and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil.

Do you know, I envy you that,' Sir James said, as they continued walking at the rather brisk pace set by Dorothea. 'I don't quite understand what you mean.' 'Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons. I know when I like people. But about other matters, do you know, I have often a difficulty in deciding. One hears very sensible things said on opposite sides.

We read, indeed, that the walls of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets,39 but we nowhere hear that those trumpets were hoarse and feeble. Doubtless they were trumpets that gave forth clear ringing tones, and sent a mighty vibration through brick and mortar. But the oratory of the Rev. Amos resembled rather a Belgian railway-horn, which shows praiseworthy intentions inadequately fulfilled.

so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness rather than beauty.

I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad,—I should be sorry for him to be a raskill,—but a sort o' engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence and never know anything greater.

No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality

There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present.

I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract.

a horsewhipping is not likely to be paid for with sugar-plums.

his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the more intensely. He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.