George Eliot Quotes

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.

In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception.

Men and women are but children of a larger growth.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.

Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.

Human experience is usually paradoxical.

All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!

Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.

Correct English is the slang of prigs.

There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth-are something better than youth.

There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.

As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.

Steady work turns genius to a loom.

A proud woman who has learned to submit carries all her pride to the reinforcement of her submission, and looks down with severe superiority on all feminine assumption as unbecoming.

Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love.

When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.

One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be a better man.

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.

All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet.

It is difficult for woman to try to be anything good when she is not believed in.

That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.

Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone that by unexpected words.

A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She'd make them newly, being what she was.

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,--whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,--which afterwards subside into cheerful peace.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.

I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.

We have all our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.

Particular lies may speak a general truth.

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.

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.

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

The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.

It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent - like a carrier pigeon.

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate.