Quotes by George Eliot
It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.
In every parting there is an image of death.
Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
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.
Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
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.
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.
There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
There are many victories worse than a defeat.
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the "dear deceit" of beauty.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
