George Eliot Quotes

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
George Eliot

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
George Eliot

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
George Eliot

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
George Eliot

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
George Eliot

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.
George Eliot

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
George Eliot

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
George Eliot

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
George Eliot

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
George Eliot

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

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

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
George Eliot

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
George Eliot

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
George Eliot

That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.
George Eliot

That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.
George Eliot

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.
George Eliot

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
George Eliot

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 happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
George Eliot

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
George Eliot

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.
George Eliot

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
George Eliot

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
George Eliot

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

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

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.
George Eliot

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.
George Eliot

There are many victories worse than a defeat.
George Eliot

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.
George Eliot

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
George Eliot

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
George Eliot

'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.
George Eliot

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
George Eliot

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
George Eliot

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
George Eliot

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
George Eliot

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.
George Eliot

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
George Eliot

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

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

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
George Eliot

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
George Eliot

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.
George Eliot

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
George Eliot

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
George Eliot

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?
George Eliot

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
George Eliot

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