1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error.

Yes, Isaac Taylor, who has just published 'The World of Mind,' is the Isaac Taylor, author of the 'Natural History of Enthusiasm.' I dare say by this time there is a want of fatty particles in his brain.

Genius ... is necessarily intolerant of fetters ...

Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink . . .

It is necessary to me, not simply to be but to utter, and I require utterance of my friends.

The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.