George Eliot Quotes

To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.

The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.

It is never too late to be who you want to be.

Our life is determined for us--and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

But faithfulness can feed on suffering, And knows no disappointment.

I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of.

I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over.

Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.

After all, the true seeing is within.

... the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.

Man cannot choose his duties.

But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

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

The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts.

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

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

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

We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

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

Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.

Shall we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves only the privilege of imperishability?

Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary.

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

It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.

to my thinking, it is more pitiable to bore than to be bored.

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give.

Leisure is gone,--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.

We judge other according to results; how else?--not knowing the process by which results are arrived at.

News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime.

Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.

The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.

The best travel is that which one can take by one's own fireside. In memory or imagination.