George Eliot, Middlemarch Quotes

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

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.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.

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

Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

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

Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.

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.

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.

People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.

How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?

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

To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.

A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.

Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.

Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.

In poor Rosamond’s mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.

If we had lost our own chief good, other people’s good would remain, and that is worth trying for.

We cannot help the way in which people speak of us . . .

He has got no good red blood in his body, " said Sir James."No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses, " said Mrs. Cadwallader.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

He has got no good red blood in his body, " said Sir James."No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses, " said Mrs. Cadwallader.

What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?

what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an ‘appointment’) which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.

I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.

what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

I cannot imagine myself without some opinion, but I wish to have good reasons for them.

Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.

Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like "feeling obligated to look serious", and he centers his doubts on "what people expect of a clergyman".

Mrs. Bulstrode's naïve way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask...

If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?