Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Most of her novels are set in provincial England, and are loved for their realism and psychological insight.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
George Eliot
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence.
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
George Eliot
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it.It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
George Eliot
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.It is good to be unselfish and generous; but don’t carry that too far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow-trade; you must know where to find yourself.No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.No man can be wise on an empty stomach.It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?
George Eliot
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.
Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'
I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.
George Eliot
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be a better man.Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.After all, the true seeing is within.It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.Blameless people are always the most exasperating.The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.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.Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.Those who trust us educate us.For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.Hurt, he'll never be hurt—he's made to hurt other people.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.Be courteous, be obliging, but don’t give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade.No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.
