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
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.
advance animal degrade far leaving man present raise simply theory
If Darwin's theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as far in advance as he is at present
activity falls grief intelligence-and-intellectuals life serene struggle supremacy understand worldly
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
memories butterfly expectations
Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.
determined life private public wider
There is no private life which is not determined by a wider public life
apt curiously feeble grain mixed
We must not inquire too curiously into motives... They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
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.
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.
motivational spiritual dog
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
wisdom travel adventure
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
compassion joy suffering
My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
limits wells
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
friendship cute faith
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.