Quotes by George Eliot
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
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.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: -in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
Blows are sarcasm's turned stupid.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
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.
Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.
Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.
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.
Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
