George Eliot > Quotes

“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

“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

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”
― 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 nor measure words.”
― George Eliot

“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

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“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

“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

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

“Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it.”
― 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

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

“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.”
― 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: A Study of Provincial Life

“Life seems to on without effort when I am filled with music.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.”
― George Eliot

“It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.”
― George Eliot

“it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“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, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”
― George Eliot, Adam Bede

“Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”
― George Eliot, Mr Gilfil's Love Story

“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

“I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”
― 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: A Study of Provincial Life

“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

“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: A Study of Provincial Life

“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

“Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“Selfish- a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice. ”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
― George Eliot

“The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.”
― George Eliot

“It is very hard 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

“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

“What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”
― George Eliot, Adam Bede

“Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.”
― George Eliot

“what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”
― George Eliot

“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.”
― George Eliot

“I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss