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Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

George Eliot

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George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
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Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
True
Consolation
Order
Carefully
Find
Pages
Book
Name
Great
Names
Hindered
Much
Looking
Contents
Like
Knowledge
Preoccupation
World
Whether
Examining

More quotes by George Eliot

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Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.
George Eliot
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No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.
George Eliot
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Loquacity with tongue or pen is its own reward -- or, punishment.
George Eliot
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How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?
George Eliot
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Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.
George Eliot
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Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
George Eliot
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... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.
George Eliot
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The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
George Eliot
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When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business - that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time.
George Eliot
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Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
George Eliot
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I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
George Eliot
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Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.
George Eliot
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Perhaps the wind Wails so in winter for the summers dead, And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries For what has been and is not.
George Eliot
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I love words they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.
George Eliot
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No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
George Eliot
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It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.
George Eliot
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Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary.
George Eliot
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The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
George Eliot
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When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.
George Eliot
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You are discontented with the world because you can't get just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's a world where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and misery, and tainted with pollution.
George Eliot