George Eliot Quotes

I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson.

Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.

The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose. . . .

The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'.

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you'd think I should to share those good things; but I should better to share in your trouble and your labour.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Yes, Isaac Taylor, who has just published 'The World of Mind,' is the Isaac Taylor, author of the 'Natural History of Enthusiasm.' I dare say by this time there is a want of fatty particles in his brain.

As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey.

We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.

Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

I hold it a blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.

Teach love, for that is what you are.

It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.

the Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.

We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.

Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.

What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!

There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.

I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight-that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult.

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.

bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.

We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom.

Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary.

I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.

But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.