1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future,

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

The majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own judgement

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.

We cannot help the way in which people speak of us . . .

A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamund’s fingers, and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter.

She had forgotten his faults as we forgetthe sorrows of our departed childhood.

What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?