George Eliot Quotes | GloryQuotes

George Eliot Quotes About Life

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

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.

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

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

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

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

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

George Eliot Quotes About Love

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

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

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

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

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

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.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

More Quotes by George Eliot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

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

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

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

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

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

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

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

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

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

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

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

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

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

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

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

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

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

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

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.

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

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

Browse 128 quotes attributed to George Eliot, listed in the source data as a British Author, organized around themes such as Life, Love, Women. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.