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... as usual I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books.

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
Translator
Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Suffering
Usual
Fear
Contribution
May
Complete
Able
Mere
Book
Worth
Much
Doubt
Heap
Make
Books
Lest
Literature
Addition

More quotes by George Eliot

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I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of.
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Those who trust us educate us.
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Quarrel? Nonsense we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
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Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans - which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.
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I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be murdered.
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I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
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The tread Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, And hears them never pause, but pass and die.
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And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
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When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.
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The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.
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Subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
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Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
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Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.
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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!
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In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.
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Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.
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Genius is the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline.
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Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth.
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A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
George Eliot
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Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.
George Eliot