Top 1025 Quotes & Sayings by George Eliot - Page 2
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British novelist George Eliot.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.
In every parting there is an image of death.
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.
No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.
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.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
Consequences are unpitying.
The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.
But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.
In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
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.
Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
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.
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
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.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
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.
I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.
That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.
The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.
Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
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.
You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.
Breed is stronger than pasture.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.
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?
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes
American
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist