George Eliot Quotes

If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?

I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.

All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite.

We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.

One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.

There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.

But she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

The fact is, both callers and work thicken - the former sadly interfering with the latter.

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.

What is opportunity to the man who cant use it?

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.

The intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear.

Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities - a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces - a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.

We are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us.

The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

A good solid bit of work lasts.

Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!

In high vengeance there is noble scorn.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

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.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.

... as usual I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books.

Hear Everything and judge for yourself