George Eliot Quotes

I like characters with flaws, who have shadow.

I cotton to the idea that people are much closer to being flawed; they have problems and don't always make the right choices.

Bad's the best of us.

We in the media are just people with all of people's faults.

All of my characters are less than perfect.

All my characters are quite relatable, as they are flawed, true, and honest. All of us are flawed; nobody is pure and pious.

The best of men are men at best

I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.

Never forget that a man is made great and perfect as much by his faults as by his virtues. So we must not seek to rob a nation of its character, even if it could be proved that the character was all faults.

For character too is a process and an unfolding. . . among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful. . . .

The best characters are always wretchedly flawed

It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot.

Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.

The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.

What the writers do, and we hopefully can bring to life, is that they present characters who, on the surface, aren't always heroic and their acts aren't always devoid of selfishness.

I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.

Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.

Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.

Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.

It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.

What makes a strong female character is a character who has weaknesses, who has flaws, who is maybe not immediately likable, but eventually relatable.

I've always been interesting in characters that challenge people and who are not always that easy to like.

My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that moving. It's not a life I'd want to live. But, then, I'm not completely my books.

There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies.