George Eliot Quotes

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. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.

You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only es

I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour-or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.

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.

Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries.

Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.

Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine and with human labor.

in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.

In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also.

I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.

I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me