Quotes By George Eliot

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

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

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

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

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

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

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

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

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

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.

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

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

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.

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.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

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

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

Consequences are unpitying.

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