George Eliot – 63 Quotes

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63 Quotes by George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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.

– George Eliot

All the learnin’ my father paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

– George Eliot

In every parting there is an image of death.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

– George Eliot

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

– George Eliot

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

– George Eliot

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?

– George Eliot

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

– George Eliot

We must not sit still and look for miracles up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

– George Eliot

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

– George Eliot

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

– George Eliot

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

– George Eliot

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

– George Eliot

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

– George Eliot

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

– George Eliot

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

– George Eliot

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

– George Eliot

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

– George Eliot

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

– George Eliot

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

– George Eliot

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

– George Eliot

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

– George Eliot

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

– George Eliot

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

– George Eliot

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.

– George Eliot

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

– George Eliot

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

– George Eliot

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

– George Eliot

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot

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

– George Eliot