Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

Mary Anne Evans (1819–80,) known by her pseudonym George Eliot, was an English novelist. Her novels of provincial life, most famously Middlemarch (1871–72,) are celebrated for their realistic exploration of moral problems, and the social and psychological analysis portrayed in the modern novel.

Born in Warwickshire in the English Midlands, Eliot was the youngest of the five children. While attending boarding school, she was deeply influenced by a priest’s encouragement of personal salvation through faith and religious self-sacrifice. When her mother died in 1836, Eliot left school to help run her father’s household. After her father’s death, Eliot settled in London. She met philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived until his death in 1878. Lewes was married, couldn’t get divorced legally and marry Eliot; so, their relationship caused an outrage. Family and friends shunned Eliot.

Eliot’s first novel, Adam Bede (1859,) brought her fame and success. She used a male nom de plume to make sure that her works were taken seriously in an age when female authors were regularly associated with romantic novels.

Eliot’s other notable works include The Mill on the Floss (1860,) Silas Marner (1861,) Romola (1863,) her masterpiece Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda (1874–76.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Evil

Childhood has no forebodings; but then it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Children

In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Children

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Consequences

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Failure

I could not live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Sin

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Childhood

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Tradition

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Reason

Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Language

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Prophecy

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Encouragement, Excellence

One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property, which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Self-Discovery, Conceit

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Men & Women, Men, Women

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Inspiration, Inspirational

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Humility

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one’s life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Action

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Thought, Being True to Yourself, Goals, Mindsets, Reason, Strength, Dreams, Positive Attitudes, Optimism

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Jokes, Affection, Humor

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Love

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Autumn

This is the bitterest of all, to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Remorse

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Deeds, Action, Secrets of Success, Goodness, Good Deeds

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Pride

Don’t let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow passenger swallowed by the waves?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Punishment

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Genius

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Despair, Worry

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