(1819–1880)
English novelist
George Eliot
I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody’s pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady’s chair.
“The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” in Scenes of a Clerical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 16.
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 173.
I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day…No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.
Adam Bede (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917), 168.
If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself.
The Mill on the Floss (New York: John B. Alden, 1883), 217.
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, vol 1 (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871), 404.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
The Writings of George Eliot, vol. 23 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 71.
It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crop.
Adam Bede (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860), 173.