Author · British · 1819 – 1880 · 128 quotes
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
George Eliot
Author · British · 1819 – 1880
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
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.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
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.
A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
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.
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
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.
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
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.
People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.
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.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
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?
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
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.
I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
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.
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
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.
In every parting there is an image of death.
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
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.
