Quote

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

George Eliot

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Strong
Discontent
Care
Sensibility
Littles
Intense
Little
Satisfaction
Without
Supreme
Self
Core
Egoistic
Love
Possible
Conceited
Rather
Conceit

More quotes by George Eliot

Image
The sweetest of all success is that which one wins by hard exertion.
George Eliot
Image
Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
George Eliot
Image
... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.
George Eliot
Image
That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
George Eliot
Image
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.
George Eliot
Image
I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.
George Eliot
Image
Pride only helps us to be generous it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
George Eliot
Image
There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.
George Eliot
Image
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.
George Eliot
Image
To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is the sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue.
George Eliot
Image
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime.
George Eliot
Image
I love words they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.
George Eliot
Image
What is your religion? I mean-not what you know about religion but the belief that helps you most?
George Eliot
Image
It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give.
George Eliot
Image
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
George Eliot
Image
There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.
George Eliot
Image
Human experience is usually paradoxical.
George Eliot
Image
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
George Eliot
Image
Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.
George Eliot
Image
Speech is often barren but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.
George Eliot