George Eliot Quotes

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

I'm not one of those that can see the cat in the dairy and wonder what she's there for.

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.

You are discontented with the world because you can't get just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's a world where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and misery, and tainted with pollution.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Better a false belief than no belief at all.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Opinions: men's thoughts about great subjects. Taste: their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior, amusements, ornaments.

The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

What is your religion? I mean-not what you know about religion but the belief that helps you most?

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.

I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone.

What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman's face? And is there any harmony of tints that has such stirring of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice?

To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.

Loquacity with tongue or pen is its own reward -- or, punishment.

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.

I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.

...Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on---- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

... the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, orthe dulness [sic] of our own jokes.

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.

...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth.

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

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. . . .

There is so much to read and the days are so short! I get more hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger.

History repeats itself.

No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.

When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.

Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs.