Top 500 George Eliot Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”

— George Eliot

202. “I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.”

— George Eliot

203. “One couldn’t carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.”

— George Eliot

204. “Where Jack isn’t safe, Tom’s in danger.”

— George Eliot

205. “In the ages since Adam’s marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also.”

— George Eliot

206. “All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that 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.”

— George Eliot

207. “Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead.”

— George Eliot

208. “Our life is determined for us – and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do.”

— George Eliot

209. “They said of old the Soul had human shape, But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self, So wandered forth for airing when it pleased.”

— George Eliot

210. “A man’s mind–what there is of it–has always the advantage of being masculine,–as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,–and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.”

— George Eliot

211. “In this stupid world, most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.”

— George Eliot

212. “Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”

— George Eliot

213. “Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

— George Eliot

214. “One can begin so many things with a new person! – even begin to be a better man.”

— George Eliot

215. “History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.”

— George Eliot

216. “That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.”

— George Eliot

217. “A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.”

— George Eliot

218. “No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience.”

— George Eliot

219. “God, immortality, duty – how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third.”

— George Eliot

220. “Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.”

— George Eliot

221. “Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.”

— George Eliot

222. “As to his religious notions – why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don’t mind about his incantations.” “Very.”

— George Eliot

223. “Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.”

— George Eliot

224. “What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.”

— George Eliot

225. “The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.”

— George Eliot

226. “A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.”

— George Eliot

227. “The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.”

— George Eliot

228. “It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult.”

— George Eliot

229. “We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.”

— George Eliot

230. “With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader.”

— George Eliot

231. “Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.”

— George Eliot

232. “No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.”

— George Eliot

233. “The devil tempts us not – ’tis we tempt him, Reckoning his skill with opportunity.”

— George Eliot

234. “Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts, Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence; Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line, May languish with the scurvy.”

— George Eliot

235. “Hurt, he’ll never be hurt – he’s made to hurt other people.”

— George Eliot

236. “The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence.”

— George Eliot

237. “To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.”

— George Eliot

238. “Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.”

— George Eliot

239. “I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.”

— George Eliot

240. “If Art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally.”

— George Eliot

241. “We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime.”

— George Eliot

242. “Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!”

— George Eliot

243. “No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.”

— George Eliot

244. “The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.”

— George Eliot

245. “There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.”

— George Eliot

246. “It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.”

— George Eliot

247. “It’s no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.”

— George Eliot

248. “Solomon’s Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos.”

— George Eliot

249. “What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind – the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.”

— George Eliot

250. “In every parting there is an image of death.”

— George Eliot