Quotes By George Eliot

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

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

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

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

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

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.

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

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

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.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

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

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

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

And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.