1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

When the commonplace "We must all die" tranfors itself suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must die - and soon," then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first.

... Genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humilty, but in a power to making or do, not anything in general, but something in particular.

But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from the chair, the world was new to him by a presentment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed was knowledge.

That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the course emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it.

A lifeless embalmment of knowledge

What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his; and such capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him by the general life of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of dried preparation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.

I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract.

For religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed;and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.

Let the music which can take the possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more - what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its absence?