George Eliot Quotes
Most popular George Eliot Quotes
Consequences are unpitying.
Correct English is the slang of prigs.
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
Time, like money, is measured by our needs.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.
Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
A man must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.
Wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
Hatred is like fire—it makes even light rubbish deadly.
And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our needs.
Biographies generally are a disease of English literature.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
The reward of one duty done is the power to fulfill another.
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop.
There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.
I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
There are glances of hatred that stab, and raise no cry of murder.
He was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
A difference of tastes in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he christened it persecution.
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.
We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.
Watch your own speech, and notice how it is guided by your less conscious purposes.
Her own misery filled her heart; there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.
Animals are such agreeable friends — they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
Pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
It was as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room.
And 'tis a strange truth that only in the agony of parting we look into the depths of love.
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside itself—it only requires opportunity.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning, there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say,abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
One of the tortures of jealousy is that it can never turn away its eyes from the thing that pains it.
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us.
Justice is like the Kingdom of God—it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.
That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'ull tell him he's wise.
I...am reading aloud in a clerkly manner from a book which hath been culled from the flowers of all books.
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
It is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character that he should be mastered by love.
All of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.
No story is the same to us after the lapse of time: or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
At the last moment there is always a reason not existing before—namely, the impossibility of further vacillation.
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.
Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
Of a truth, knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be.
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.
Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish.
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends . . . to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
Wear a smile and have friends wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger.
It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will have it if they cannot find it.
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.
A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it tomorrow.
There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
Character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.
The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say...that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.
What makes life dreary is the want of motive.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are.
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
