George Eliot Quotes About Virtue

• 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

  Spiritual, Men, Crowns

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.38

• 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

  Children, Sacrifice, Thinking

• ... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

  George Eliot

  Selfish, Gentleman, Vices

  George Eliot (1873). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. By George Eliot ....”, p.354

• I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight-that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

  George Eliot

  Taken, Sight, Doors

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.136, Penguin

• To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

  George Eliot

  Men, Names, Virtue

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt, the Radical”, p.230, Hayes Barton Press

• To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is the sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue.

  George Eliot

  Revenge, Fall, Giving

  George Eliot (2016). “The Mill On The Floss”, p.294, George Eliot

• A woman mixed of such fine elements
  That were all virtue and religion dead
  She'd make them newly, being what she was.

  George Eliot

  Women, Elements, Virtue

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.403

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