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
atheism taste infinite
Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.
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
awe beauty bending calm certain earth glowing human inward majesty older perfectly presence quiet silent steady sweet trees warmth
She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep--only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky--before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.
companion grief lasting longer sit wrestling
She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
breath exalt human love perfect poetry relation
Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relation of the least-instructed human beings...
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.
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.
draught helpful pity simple wisdom
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple pity that will not forsake us
gentle
Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness
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.
british-author foxes interest lives peace sincere
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
death
When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.
british-author consists denying
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.