Skip to content

People Quotes by George Eliot

56 People quotes by George Eliot

All People quotes George Eliot’s page

George Eliot observes how people cling to opinions and fear blame. She notes that bravery is praised except when it protects a neighbor, and that self‑confidence often masks an imagined dullness in others. She also points out that those who cannot be witty may become overly devout and affectionate.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Image

Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.

Image

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

Image

Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

Image

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Image

It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like…

Image

The worst of all hobbies are those that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money down like corn…

Image

I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like…

Image

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people…

Image

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means -one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas…

Image

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest,…

Image

Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

Image

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring…

Image

Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated…

Image

A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive…

Image

Dear Friends all, A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you -- good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen.…

Image

Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can…

Image

Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through…

Image

How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root…

Image

“After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may…

Image

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent,…

Image

If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the…

Image

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify…

Image

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of…

Image

I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people…

Image

Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not…

Image

Lord! Thou art with Thy people still; they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest…

Image

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

Image

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

Image

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

Image

We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.

Image

Don't seem to he on the lookout for crows, else you'll set other people watching.

Image

People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes.

Image

The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.

Image

I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal…

Image

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few…

Image

He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself...

Image

Other authors on People

More by George Eliot

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on…

Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.

The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from…

“[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range…

“Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out…

“... she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex…

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.

And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.

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

“But any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells…

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial…

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

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt…