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)
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Secrets of Success, Goodness, Good Deeds, Deeds, Action
Don’t seem to be on the lookout for crows, else you’ll set other people watching.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Friendship, Agreement
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.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Grieving, Grief
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Happiness, Contentment
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land. If a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy, lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and actors were also the heroes?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Jews
Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Leadership, Influence
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: Quarrels, Fight, Fighting
That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Marriage, Wives
Nothing will give permanent success in any enterprise of life, except native capacity cultivated by honest and persevering effort.—Genius is often but the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Genius
What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Disasters, Tragedy
The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Tolerance
There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Pride
Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking
I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Failure, Persistence, Purpose, Perseverance
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Uncertainty, Courage, Cowardice, Doubt
Consequences are unpitying.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Consequences
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Death, Nature
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Love
Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Past, The Past, Time
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Words
Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Character, Decisions, Integrity, Truth
Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Sympathy
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit” of beauty.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Beauty
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Loneliness, Doubt
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Reading, Appreciation
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: Self-Discovery, Explanation, Adversity
Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Difficulty
His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Men & Women, Women, Men, Men and Women
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Affection, Humor, Jokes
Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means—one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Mistakes
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Friends and Friendship
For character too is a process and an unfolding… among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Character
In the small circle of pain within the skull
You still shall tramp and tread one endless round
Of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
Which never is belief: this is your fate on earth
And we must think no further of you.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Guilt
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Fear
Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Topics: Illusion, Appearance
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