George Eliot

Literature English 1819 – 1880 97 quotes

The pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.

Quotes by George Eliot

The keenest of all delights for the most part is to have a little bit of one's own way.

Middlemarch 1871

Prophet, or poet, or quack, it is alike to the world, which knows not the voice of the eternal.

Essays 1856

I have felt that my life has been too swiftly ripened.

Letter to John Walter Cross 1880

The first impulse of conscience is not to do, but to learn.

The Impressions of Theophrastus Such 1860

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life, for the time.

Middlemarch 1871

The dead level of provincial existence.

Middlemarch 1871

A difference of lot, a difference of memories, a difference of mode of feeling.

The Mill on the Floss 1859

I have the heartache for you, Mr. Casaubon.

Middlemarch 1871

The men who have had the most to give to the world have been those who gave themselves.

Impressions of Theophrastus Such 1879

It was a time when ignorance was every man's refuge and power.

Silas Marner 1861

The rich often envy the poor for the same reason that the poor envy the rich.

Adam Bede 1859

One can't learn everything at once.

Daniel Deronda 1876

The happiest torment is to be loved and not to love.

The Mill on the Floss 1859

I expect to do more good by stimulating thought than by any direct teaching.

Letter to Charles Bray 1852

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.

Letter 1876

In books there is no perfume, but a subtle perfume escapes from the binding.

Felix Holt, the Radical 1868

The mysterious paths of our life cannot always be foreseen.

Felix Holt, the Radical 1866