1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian.

I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.

The clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.["Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," The Westminster Review, 1885.]

It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.