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)
Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful, and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only; you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Happiness
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)
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Friendship, Service, Kindness, Helpfulness, Compassion, Life, Hatred, Difficulty
More helpful than all wisdom or counsel is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Sympathy
We do not expect to be deeply moved by what is not unusual… 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.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities –a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Opportunity, Life, Living
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
I like not only to be loved,
but to be told I am loved.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent — like a carrier-pigeon.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Talent
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. That’s my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Winning, Fighting
Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Animals, Questions, Friendship
Coarse kindness is, at least, better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Fighting
A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Goals, Positive Attitudes, Thought, Optimism, Dreams, Mindsets, Strength
The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Success
Starting a long way off the true point by loops and zigags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Appearance
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Adversity, Self-Discovery
My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Progress
Solomon’s Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Jealousy, Anger
It’s easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Patience
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