Top 500 George Eliot Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Net the large fish and you are sure to have the small fry.”

— George Eliot

252. “There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.”

— George Eliot

253. “How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends!”

— George Eliot

254. “What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”

— George Eliot

255. “We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.”

— George Eliot

256. “Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.”

— George Eliot

257. “I protest against any absolute conclusion.”

— George Eliot

258. “Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.”

— George Eliot

259. “There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music, – that does not make a man sing or play the better.”

— George Eliot

260. “A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts.”

— George Eliot

261. “Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.”

— George Eliot

262. “An Italian with white mice! – on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one’s feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.”

— George Eliot

263. “In high vengeance there is noble scorn.”

— George Eliot

264. “This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry’s got a finger in it.”

— George Eliot

265. “There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.”

— George Eliot

266. “We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.”

— George Eliot

267. “Life is like a game of whist. I don’t enjoy the game much; but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.”

— George Eliot

268. “It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don’t give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade.”

— George Eliot

269. “Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.”

— George Eliot

270. “A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.”

— George Eliot

271. “It’s well known there’s always two sides, if no more.”

— George Eliot

272. “Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.”

— George Eliot

273. “As leopard feels at home with leopard.”

— George Eliot

274. “Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, And righteous or unrighteous, being done, Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself Be laid in stillness, and the universe Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more.”

— George Eliot

275. “The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness.”

— George Eliot

276. “Boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there’s no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they are.”

— George Eliot

277. “When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech-one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are.”

— George Eliot

278. “The best fire doesna flare up the soonest.”

— George Eliot

279. “It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.”

— George Eliot

280. “It’s like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest – one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it’s little we can do arter all – the big things come and go wi’ no striving o’ our’n – they do, that they do...”

— George Eliot

281. “The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.”

— George Eliot

282. “Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.”

— George Eliot

283. “Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.”

— George Eliot

284. “If we could hear the squirrel’s heartbeat, the sound of the grass growing, we should die of that roar.”

— George Eliot

285. “Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.”

— George Eliot

286. “Souls live on in perpetual echoes.”

— George Eliot

287. “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.”

— George Eliot

288. “There’s no disappointment in memory, and one’s exaggerations are always on the good side.”

— George Eliot

289. “Life would be no better than candlelight tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been.”

— George Eliot

290. “Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.”

— George Eliot

291. “For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.”

— George Eliot

292. “If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial.”

— George Eliot

293. “But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon,” said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardor, “character is not cut in marble – it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

— George Eliot

294. “A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.”

— George Eliot

295. “I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me.”

— George Eliot

296. “I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”

— George Eliot

297. “Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.”

— George Eliot

298. “The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.”

— George Eliot

299. “You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot