# Quote — George Eliot, Silas Marner

> I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and petticoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. There was a fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and bungling sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary and hypocritical.

- Author: [George Eliot](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot.md)
- Book: [Silas Marner](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner.md)
- Page: 77
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Silas_Marner:_The_Weaver_of_Raveloe_(1861)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/i-suppose-one

## More from this book

> when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.

p. 183 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/when-a-man.md)

> She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

p. 118 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/she-was-perfectly.md)

> "Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest — one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all — the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n — they do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep the little un, Master Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you, though there's folks as thinks different."

p. 121 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/ah-said-dolly.md)