Browse 11 quotations connecting George Eliot with Compassion, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda.
“We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.”
The speaker recognizes a contradiction between invoking divine mercy and refusing human mercy, marking a movement away from hardness toward compassion.
Source note: Adam Bede; Adam speaks during the crisis surrounding Hetty’s trial, explicitly reconsidering his earlier hardness.
“It’s easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.”
The remark exposes the asymmetry between recommending endurance to someone else and actually bearing hardship oneself.
Source note: Adam Bede; spoken in dialect within the novel, so the source note keeps the fictional conversational setting rather than turning it into an editionless author maxim.
“every unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart awake to others”
The phrase values small, unshowy signs of attention because they reveal active awareness of other people rather than performative benevolence.
Source note: Daniel Deronda; narrator-level phrase in a passage about unnoticed social influence and responsiveness to others.
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”
A meaningful life is connected with reducing other people’s burdens, making usefulness and care central rather than peripheral.
Source note: Middlemarch, Book VIII.
“There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and there was love between the child and the world.”
Affection between caregiver and child becomes a bridge rather than a closed bond: loving the child also draws Silas outward toward the wider world she naturally engages.
Source note: Silas Marner; the narration emphasizes that Eppie’s attachment joins Silas not only to her but also to the social world from which he had retreated.
“a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition of good to others”
Eliot describes a form of acceptance that is active and relational rather than passive: willingly bearing a cost can become morally significant when that cost is genuinely required for another person’s good.
Source note: The Essays of George Eliot, Project Gutenberg #28289, in Eliot’s criticism of Edward Young’s moral and theological outlook. The phrase is part of a longer sentence listing elements of virtue rooted in human sympathy and arguing that such moral concern need not depend on belief in a future life.
“My house is yours, mother, always”
Tom gives his mother an unconditional place in his home, presenting adult family duty as continuing practical support rather than a temporary obligation.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book VII, Project Gutenberg #6688. Tom speaks to Mrs Tulliver as she prepares to leave with Maggie.
“My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother.”
Mrs Tulliver’s immediate decision to accompany Maggie turns motherhood into concrete solidarity when her daughter expects rejection and isolation.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book VII, Project Gutenberg #6688. Mrs Tulliver responds after Maggie returns under public condemnation.
“Don't fret, mother. I shall soon be able to get money; I'll get a situation of some sort.”
Tom responds to family financial collapse by trying to reassure his mother and assuming responsibility for earning, showing duty emerging under pressure.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book III, Project Gutenberg #6688. Tom speaks after the Tulliver bankruptcy; the line belongs to a fictional family crisis.
“you mustn't think o' running away from father. What 'ud father do without his little wench?”
Mr Tulliver answers a child’s impulse to run away by stressing reciprocal attachment: Maggie matters to her father as much as she depends on him.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book I, Project Gutenberg #6688. Mr Tulliver speaks to Maggie; dialect and fictional voice are retained rather than normalized into authorial advice.
“the mother pleased herself with wearing out her own hands to save the hands that had so much more life in them.”
The narrator depicts maternal sacrifice through physical labour, showing Mrs Tulliver taking extra wear upon herself to preserve more possibility for her daughter.
Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book IV, Project Gutenberg #6688. Narrator commentary on Mrs Tulliver's work for Maggie; the period gender context remains part of the scene.