1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.

But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

Some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside.

There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.

One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.