"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
— George Eliot

"I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear."
— George Eliot

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"
— George Eliot

"A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away."
— George Eliot

"Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words."
— George Eliot

"It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor to measure words but to pour them all out, just as it is, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keeping what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away."
— George Eliot

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact."
— George Eliot

"'Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'

'I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.'"
— George Eliot

"Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts or measure words."
— George Eliot

"And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
— George Eliot

"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"
— George Eliot

"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them."
— George Eliot

"Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it."
— George Eliot

"Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another."
— George Eliot

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
— George Eliot

"...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
— George Eliot

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts -- not to hurt others."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence."
— George Eliot

"Life seems to on without effort when I am filled with music."
— George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)

"Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds."
— George Eliot (Adam Bede)

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."
— George Eliot

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."
— George Eliot

"It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses."
— George Eliot

"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."
— George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)

"It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much."
— George Eliot

"Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people."
— George Eliot (Silas Marner)

"Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean."
— George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)

"Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart."
— George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)

"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch (Barnes & Noble Classics))

"There is no despair so absolute as that which comes from the first moments of our first great sorrow when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and healed, to have despaired and recovered hope."
— George Eliot

"If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it."
— George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)

"Our deeds still travel with us from afar/And what we have been makes us what we are."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Selfish- a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice. "
— George Eliot (Silas Marner)

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
— George Eliot

"For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"...it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"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. "
— George Eliot

"The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision."
— George Eliot

"Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of a young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. . . . But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
— George Eliot

"Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult....Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings- much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth."
— George Eliot (Adam Bede)

"Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
— George Eliot

"No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. "
— George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)