Quote

We cannot reform our forefathers.

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
Forefathers
Reform
Cannot

More quotes by George Eliot

Image
The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest.
George Eliot
Image
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.
George Eliot
Image
I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate.
George Eliot
Image
All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!
George Eliot
Image
Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile.
George Eliot
Image
Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
George Eliot
Image
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
Image
Adventure is not outside man it is within.
George Eliot
Image
Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.
George Eliot
Image
What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.
George Eliot
Image
I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged.
George Eliot
Image
Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts, Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line, May languish with the scurvy.
George Eliot
Image
A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
George Eliot
Image
You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.
George Eliot
Image
... there is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and go--music, the fine arts, that kind of thing--they should study those up to a certain point, women should but in a light way, you know.
George Eliot
Image
There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate.
George Eliot
Image
So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.
George Eliot
Image
I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.
George Eliot
Image
How oft review each finding, like a friend, Something to blame, and something to commend.
George Eliot
Image
To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
George Eliot