George Eliot

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.

— George Eliot

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

— George Eliot

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

— George Eliot

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

— George Eliot

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

— George Eliot

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

— George Eliot

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

— George Eliot

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Apropos of the "The Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies, and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea: —

— 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 kind. 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

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

— 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

— George Eliot

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

— George Eliot

The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.

— George Eliot

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

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

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

— George Eliot

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

— George Eliot

The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state.

— George Eliot

Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

— George Eliot

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

— George Eliot

Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.

— George Eliot

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.

— George Eliot

Worldly faces, never look so worldly as at a funeral.

— George Eliot

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

— George Eliot

Who can proveDulness intuitive declares wit dull?

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop.

— George Eliot

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

— George Eliot

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

— 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

Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before — consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.

— George Eliot

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

The natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot".

— George Eliot

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

— George Eliot

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

There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it.

— George Eliot

It was a still afternoon — the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.

— George Eliot

Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.

— George Eliot

Her heart lived in no cherished secrets of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world.

— George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

— George Eliot

People who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.

— George Eliot

One can say everything best over a meal.

— George Eliot

O may I join the choir invisible

— George Eliot

"I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things".

— George Eliot

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.

— George Eliot

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

— George Eliot

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

— George Eliot

It seems to me now, if I was to find Father at home to-night, I should behave different; but there's no knowing — perhaps nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late.

— George Eliot

It was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.

— George Eliot

There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of — to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel.

— George Eliot

It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.

— George Eliot

Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.

— George Eliot

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

— George Eliot

How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?

— George Eliot

They kissed each other with a deep joy. What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, 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

You told me the truth when you said to me once, "There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for".

— George Eliot

Come in, Adam, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee.

— George Eliot

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

— George Eliot

Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

— George Eliot

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love...

— George Eliot

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.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

— George Eliot

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

— George Eliot

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

— George Eliot

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice . . .

— George Eliot

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

— George Eliot

Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than leave it him in your will.

— George Eliot

These 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

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it...

— 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

If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon.

— George Eliot

Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them.

— George Eliot

There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.

— George Eliot

High achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes.

— George Eliot

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

— George Eliot

It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a "public."

— George Eliot

If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.

— George Eliot

If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.

— George Eliot

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened?

— George Eliot

She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, — when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent.

— George Eliot

One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.

— George Eliot

There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination.

— George Eliot

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.

— George Eliot

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

— George Eliot

But then the need of being loved, the strongest need … in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride and soon threw it.

— George Eliot

He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

— George Eliot

He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark.

— George Eliot

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

— George Eliot

the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families . . .

— George Eliot

So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshness — everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled.

— George Eliot

She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.

— George Eliot

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; . . .

— George Eliot

The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink . . .

— George Eliot

. . . "there's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself."

— George Eliot

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

— George Eliot

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

— George Eliot

Instead of trying to still his fears he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come; . . .

— George Eliot

no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods

— George Eliot

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

— George Eliot

He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.

— George Eliot

Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.

— George Eliot

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

— George Eliot

She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

— George Eliot

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.

— George Eliot

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

— George Eliot

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand - ...

— George Eliot

That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger — not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.

— George Eliot

when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.

— George Eliot

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness;

— George Eliot

Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness.

— George Eliot

But veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

— George Eliot

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Truth is the precious harvest of the earth. Until men said, What profits it to sow?

— George Eliot

We mortals sometimes cut a pitiable figure in our attempts at display. We may be sure of our own merits, yet fatally ignorant of the point of view from which we are regarded by our neighbour. Our fine patterns in tattooing may be far from throwing him into a swoon of admiration, though we turn ourselves all round to show them.

— George Eliot

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

[Mr Johnson] "You know what a Tory is – one who wants to drive the working men as he'd drive cattle."

— George Eliot

[Christian] ... he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how.

— George Eliot

So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.

— George Eliot

O may I join the choir invisible To vaster issues.

— George Eliot

So to live is heaven: With growing sway the growing life of man.

— George Eliot

Creeds of terror.

— George Eliot

A serious ape whom none take seriously,By hard buffoonery.

— George Eliot

His smile is sweetened by his gravity.

— George Eliot

Certain winds will make men's temper bad.

— 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

Sad as a wasted passion.

— George Eliot

Knightly love is blent with reverenceAs heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue.

— George Eliot

Inclination snatches argumentsTo make indulgence seem judicious choice.

— George Eliot

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

— George Eliot

Perhaps the windFor what has been and is not.

— George Eliot

There comes a night when all too late Buried ere death in silent helplessness.

— George Eliot

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

— George Eliot

While the arm is strong to strike and heave, Let soul and arm give shape that will abide...

— George Eliot

Lamech's sons were heroes of their race: Mildly secure in power that needs not guile.

— George Eliot

Jubal had a frame For lack of speech to tell us they are glad.

— George Eliot

Jubal sat lonely, all around was dim, Yet his face glowed with light revealed to him

— George Eliot

Such patience have the heroes who begin, Of the world's harvest, make one poor small lyre.

— George Eliot

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

— George Eliot

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

— George Eliot

No farther will I travel: once again "'Tis he!" and run to greet me, welcoming.

— George Eliot

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

— George Eliot

No eye saw him, while with loving pride Of all the hymning train was present there.

— George Eliot

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

— George Eliot

He said within his soul, "'This is the end: So of my mighty years nought comes to me again".

— George Eliot

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

— George Eliot

I see a face of love, That past unchangeable, from change still wrought.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

"Jubal," the face said, "I am thy loved Past, Who blest thy lot above all men's beside?

— George Eliot

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

— George Eliot

With thy coming Melody was come. A seed primeval that has forests bred.

— George Eliot

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

— George Eliot

It is the glory of the heritage For too much wealth amid their poverty.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

— George Eliot

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.

— George Eliot

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

— George Eliot

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.

— George Eliot

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

— George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

— George Eliot

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

— George Eliot

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

— George Eliot

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

— George Eliot

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.

— George Eliot

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

— George Eliot

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences.’

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

‘I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known— ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.’

— George Eliot

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

— George Eliot

I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it.

— George Eliot

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

The world would have a new dreariness for her, as a wilderness that a magician’s spells had turned for a little while into a garden.

— George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

— George Eliot

In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

There could have been no more complete answer than that silence, and Lydgate, forgetting everything else, completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness at the sudden belief that this sweet young creature depended on him for her joy, actually put his arms round her, folding her gently and protectingly— he was used to being gentle with the weak and suffering—and kissed each of the two large tears. This was a strange way of arriving at an understanding, but it was a short way.

— 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

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

— George Eliot

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

— George Eliot

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic — the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.

— George Eliot

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

— George Eliot

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.

— George Eliot

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

— George Eliot

Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

— George Eliot

But what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian harp.

— George Eliot

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

— George Eliot

It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman’s End.

— George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

— George Eliot

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

— George Eliot

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

‘Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids? He only neglects his work and runs up bills.’

— George Eliot

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

— George Eliot

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge.

— George Eliot

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

— George Eliot

An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

But a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage— a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.

— 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

It was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in another.

— George Eliot

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

— George Eliot

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

It is good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow-trade; you must know where to find yourself.

— 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

The miller's daughter of fourteen could not believe that high gentry behaved badly to their wives, but her mother instructed her — "Oh, child, men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness..."

— 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

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return . . .

— George Eliot

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

— George Eliot

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

— George Eliot

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

— George Eliot

I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

— George Eliot

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

— George Eliot

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

— George Eliot

You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.

— 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

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

— George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

— George Eliot

Those who trust us educate us.

— George Eliot

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.

— George Eliot

Consequences are unpitying.

— 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

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

I began … to watch with peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic estimate of the human lot in general, should be a mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name. … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

— George Eliot

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

— George Eliot

… that modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing — not themselves but — all their neighbours.

— George Eliot

Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

— George Eliot

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

— George Eliot

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

— George Eliot

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

— George Eliot

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

— 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

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

— George Eliot

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

— George Eliot

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

— George Eliot

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

— George Eliot

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

— George Eliot

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

— George Eliot

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

— George Eliot

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

— George Eliot

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

— George Eliot

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

— George Eliot

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

— George Eliot

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

— George Eliot