George Eliot Quotes

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one!

... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.

Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone that by unexpected words.

But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.

I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.

There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

A bachelor's children are always young: they're immortal children - always lisping, waddling, helpless, and with a chance of turning out good.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Don't seem to he on the lookout for crows, else you'll set other people watching.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love - when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them.

Lord! Thou art with Thy people still; they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those that have not known Thee; open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them, and saying, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life"--see Thee hanging on the cross and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.

To the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished.

It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.

Men and women are but children of a larger growth.

Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.

I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.

A blush is no language; only a dubious flag - signal which may mean either of two contradictories

Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.

The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.

Human experience is usually paradoxical.

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.

Love supreme defies all sophistry.

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness to explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge.

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.

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 no sorrow I have thought more about than that-to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.