George Eliot Quotes on Man (43 Quotes)

But a good wife-a good unworldly woman-may really help a man, and keep him more independent.

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

One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be a better man.

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.

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.

I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor makeshift way it had better have been left to the men.

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

. . . he was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess.

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

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

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

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward and the hand may be a little child's.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles... but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

. . . 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.

To manage men, one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he's chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him....

That plain white-aproned man, who stood at work
Patient and accurate full fourscore years,
Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,
And since keen sense is love of perfectness
Made perfect violins, the needed paths
For inspiration and high mastery.

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.

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?

. . . it was the last weakness he meant to indulge in and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.

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

If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.

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.

If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon.

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

Mens men gentle or simple, theyre much of a muchness.

Abstinence is whereby a man refraineth from anything which he may lawfully claim.

The tendancy of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

An age at which many men are not quite common - at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to.

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life -- some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed -- because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

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

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature . . .

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

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

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.