Date: 1860

"Such things, uttered in low broken tones by the one voice that has first stirred the fibre of young passion, have only a feeble effect -- on experienced minds at a distance from them."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"There was a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth urged itself upon her"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment or whether we will renounce that for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us -- for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Yes! I have had feelings to struggle with - but I conquered them."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither?"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"For the most glutinously indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his own interests except the retention of his snuffbox, concerning which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"In the beginning of dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Mr Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on her."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)