George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Felix Holt, the Radical, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda, most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 November 1819
lands mortals poor reasoning wrong
Wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions
breeds cases climb hatred inflict injuries injury
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.
determined life private public wider
There is no private life which is not determined by a wider public life
circumstance fred power sharpening stress
. . . for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the constructive power of suspicion.
cares joys love outside
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
along faces merry painless
Ignorance... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.
flows foot invisible obedience path river
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice; it is a river that flows from the foot of the invisible throne, and flows by the path of obedience
best die feeling grass grow hearing heart human keen lies ordinary roar side vision walk
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the best of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
affections affliction against best confess danger defense delight experience gifts ideas joy laughed life living ought passionate perhaps personal sake share study surely sweet teaching though women
We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life -- some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed -- because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.
might
You are never too old to be what you might have been.
blessed evidence giving man worthy
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact.
cherished child degraded essence feels human life presence type
But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.
center common dissimilar feeling girl people understand
A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
greater human silent souls strengthen
What greater thing is there for two human souls that to feel that they are joined... to strengthen each other... to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.