1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

Essere poeta significa possedere un'anima così pronta a comprendere che nessuna sfumatura di qualità le sfugge, e così pronta a sentire, che quella comprensione non è che una mano che suona con varietà finemente ordinata sulle corde del sentimento - un'anima il cui sapere si trasforma istantaneamente in sentimento e il sentimento torna in un baleno ad essere un nuovo organo del sapere.

What we call the 'just possible' is sometimes true and the thing we find it easier to believe is grossly false.

The existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritous, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune.

I think there is more than enough literature of the criticizing sort...To read much of it seems to me seriously injurious: it accustoms men and women to formulate opinions instead of receiving deep impressions, and to receive deep impressions is the foundation of all true mental power.

That was an evil terror---- an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in Godfrey's kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.

People talk of their motives in a cut and dried way. Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. I am not a monster but I have not felt exactly what other women feel, or say they feel, for fear of being thought unlike others.

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.