George Eliot Quotes (451 Quotes)

Abroad, that large home of ruined reputations.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web....

For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful....

How will you find good It is not a thing of choice it is a river that flows from the foot of the invisible throne, and flows by the path of obedience

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

. . . you know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only es

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

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.

Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor.

When Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshness--everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.

. . . 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.

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

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

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

Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes . . .

He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched--he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

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

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be....

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.

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

But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly

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

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

. . . the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families . . .

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Instead of trying to still his fears, he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come . . .

Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos.

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

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.

Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.

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.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, 'Know thyself,' and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to voices within....

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love Are their first poems their best Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections

Those who trust us educate us.

The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey - double and treble the reason for loving as well as working while it is day

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.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

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

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

There are glances of hatred that stab, and raise no cry of murder.