George eliot quotes

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

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

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

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

Conscience is harder than our enemies, Knows more, accuses with more nicety.

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

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

Don't judge a book by its cover

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

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.

Correct English is the slang of prigs.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

Man cannot choose his duties.

If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.

... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.

The intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear.

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

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

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

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

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

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

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.

The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of sorrow.

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

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.

It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicians can wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas.

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

And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch

Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.

I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.

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.

Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.

We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.

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

Appearances have very little to do with happiness.

Those who trust us educate us.

I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

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.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

Souls live on in perpetual echoes.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

A maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it.

It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.

The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.

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

A good horse makes short miles.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

Trouble's made us kin.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.

My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake.

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

Starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags , we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.

In high vengeance there is noble scorn.

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.

Consequences are unpitying.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

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

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.

To fear the examination of any proposition apears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.

It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

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

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.

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

to my thinking, it is more pitiable to bore than to be bored.

In travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools' pleasure

Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.

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.

Genius ... is necessarily intolerant of fetters.

Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

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

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.

What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?

To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.

Even success needs its consolations.

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!

"Abroad," that large home of ruined reputations.

I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

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

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.

bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

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.

Effective magic is transcendent nature.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offense. ... Everyone who contributes to the 'too much' of literature is doing grave social injury.

College mostly makes people like bladders-just good for nothing but t'hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.

It's never too late to be who you were meant to be.

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.

there are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them what they're used to.

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

It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

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.