1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness

For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.

It is a fact capable of amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed towards a new acquaintance of their own sex, because she has points of inferiority.

... we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.

I think the effective use of quotation is an important point in the art of writing. Given sparingly, quotations serve admirably as a climax or as a corroboration, but when they are long and frequent, they seriously weaken the effect of a book. We lose sight of the writer - he scatters our sympathy among others than himself - and the ideas which he himself advances are not knit together with our impression of his personality.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple pity that will not forsake us

If I have read religious history aright, faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords; and it is possible, thank heaven! to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings.

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.

I am open to conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one must be eaten and the other paid.