1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.

Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.

We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.

But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we're so fond of it.

the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.

When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations.