George Eliot was born in November of 1819 under the name Mary Ann Evans. She was an English novelist, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is best known for her masterpiece Middlemarch, which has been called the greatest novel in English. Eliot’s works explore social and moral issues with intelligence and psychological depth. She also used her writing to challenge the traditional views of women’s roles in society. Her life was full of interesting twists and turns, and her best quotes is definitely worth exploring.
Here are the most interesting Truth, Love, Women, Human Beings, Nature, World, Mind quotes from George Eliot, and much more.
Summary
- About George Eliot
- George Eliot Quotes About Love
- George Eliot Quotes On Truth
- George Eliot Quotes On Nature
- George Eliot Quotes On Women
- George Eliot Quotes About The Mind
- George Eliot Quotes On Human Beings
- George Eliot Quotes About The World
About George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ABOUT LOVE
Love supreme defies all sophistry. โ George Eliot
It must be sad to outlive aught we love. โ George Eliot
Teach love, for that is what you are. โ George Eliot
There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration. โ George Eliot
A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts. โ George Eliot
Knightly love is blent with reverence As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue. โ George Eliot
It is a wonderful subduerโthis need of love, this hunger of the heart. โ George Eliot
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love. โ George Eliot
Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love. โ George Eliot
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return. โ George Eliot
Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it? โ George Eliot
I cherish my childish lovesโโthe memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged. โ George Eliot
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty. โ George Eliot
Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. โ George Eliot
Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness. โ George Eliot
I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts. โ George Eliot
It is not true that love makes all things easy, it makes us chose things that are difficult. โ George Eliot
Why was George Eliot important?
George Eliot was an English Victorian novelist known for the psychological depth of her characters and her descriptions of English rural life.
Source
Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. โ George Eliot
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. โ George Eliot
I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind. โ George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ON TRUTH
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult. โ George Eliot
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with. โ George Eliot
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth. โ George Eliot
Particular lies may speak a general truth. โ George Eliot
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through. โ George Eliot
An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. โ George Eliot
Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . . โ George Eliot
Sweet Truth is a queen proud and mightyโโHer throne is in heaven above. โ George Eliot
It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelingsโmuch harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. โ George Eliot
There’s truth in wine, and there may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it’s truth worth my knowing, is another question. โ George Eliot
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer. โ George Eliot
The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf. โ George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ON NATURE
Effective magic is transcendent nature. โ George Eliot
It is in the nature of foolish reasonings to seem good to the foolish reasoner. โ George Eliot
He had the superficial kindness of a goodโhumored, selfโsatisfied nature, that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties. โ George Eliot
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness. โ George Eliot
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrongโdoing will breed hate in the kindliest nature. โ George Eliot
Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don’t know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning. โ George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ON WOMEN
It is difficult for woman to try to be anything good when she is not believed in. โ George Eliot
It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposIte of his ideal. โ George Eliot
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. โ George Eliot
I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly. โ George Eliot
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. โ George Eliot
Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother. โ George Eliot
The beauty of a lovely woman is like music. โ George Eliot
Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. โ George Eliot
A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She’d make them newly, being what she was. โ George Eliot
Women know no perfect love: Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong; Man clings because the being whom he loves Is weak and needs him. โ George Eliot
They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit. โ George Eliot
To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline. โ George Eliot
In the ages since Adam’s marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also. โ George Eliot
How did George Eliot become famous?
In 1851 Mary Ann Evans moved to London hoping to become a freelance writer.
She worked as a subeditor at The Westminster Review, wrote essays, and translated German.
In 1858 she published her first novel under the pen name George Eliot. Her first long novel, Adam Bede, went through eight printings in a year.
Source
There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer. โ George Eliot
A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. โ George Eliot
And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better. โ George Eliot
I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men. โ George Eliot
Men and women are but children of a larger growth. โ George Eliot
A woman may get to love by degreesโthe best fire does not flare up the soonest. โ George Eliot
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. โ George Eliot
Women should be protected from anyone’s exercise of unrighteous power… but then, so should every other living creature. โ George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ABOUT THE MIND
I’d sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It’s better to know one’s robbed than to think one’s going to be murdered. โ George Eliot
Redundant Thematics
In George Eliot Statements
Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs. โ George Eliot
Folks as have no mind to be o’ use have allays the luck to be out o’ the road when there’s anything to be done. โ George Eliot
You must mind and not lower the Church in people’s eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing. โ George Eliot
In poor Rosamond’s mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in. โ George Eliot
The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic. โ George Eliot
Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence. โ George Eliot
As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it. โ George Eliot
Yes, Isaac Taylor, who has just published ‘The World of Mind,’ is the Isaac Taylor, author of the ‘Natural History of Enthusiasm.’ I dare say by this time there is a want of fatty particles in his brain. โ George Eliot
To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath. โ George Eliot
I don’t mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. โ George Eliot
I like breakfastโtime better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things. โ George Eliot
But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves. โ George Eliot
It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. โ George Eliot
There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy. โ George Eliot
It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view. โ George Eliot
There is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequences of his passionsโโdoes not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread. โ George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ON HUMAN BEINGS
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. โ George Eliot
The fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading. โ George Eliot
Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty. โ George Eliot
I do not belIeve that any wrIter has ever exposed thIs bovaryIsme, the human wIll to see thIngs as they are not, more clearly than shakespeare. โ George Eliot
Nature repairs her ravages,โโrepairs them with her sunshine and with human labor. โ George Eliot
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. โ George Eliot
The human heart finds nowhere shelter but in human kind. โ George Eliot
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy. โ George Eliot
The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice. โ George Eliot
In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception. โ George Eliot
The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence. โ George Eliot
Of all forms of human error, prophesy is the most avoidable. โ George Eliot
Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth. โ George Eliot
Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow. โ George Eliot
The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions. โ George Eliot
There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the fire of enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape. โ George Eliot
I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. โ George Eliot
Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! โ George Eliot
Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beautyโit flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. โ George Eliot
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality. โ George Eliot
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another. โ George Eliot
GEORGE ELIOT QUOTES ABOUT THE WORLD
It’s them as take advantage that get advantage i’ this world. โ George Eliot
This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry’s got a finger in it. โ George Eliot
We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us. โ George Eliot
It’s them as take advantage that get advantage I’ this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it’s brought to ’em. โ George Eliot
So to live is heaven; to make undying music in the world. โ George Eliot
So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. โ George Eliot
It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism. โ George Eliot
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self. โ George Eliot
In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures. โ George Eliot
The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world. โ George Eliot
The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities. โ George Eliot
I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world … profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove. โ George Eliot
There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room. โ George Eliot
We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom. โ George Eliot
In no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinnerโservice. โ George Eliot