George Eliot Quotes About Neighbours

• Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

  George Eliot

  Thinking, Literature, Murder

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.143, Penguin

• Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

  George Eliot

  Nice, Blue, Mind

  George Eliot (1858). “Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.72

• What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

  George Eliot

  Opportunity, Air, Satisfaction

  George Eliot (1858). “Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.24

• But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.

  George Eliot

  Judging, Desire, Paradise

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.720, Wordsworth Editions

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