Famous Quotes

Quotes by George Eliot

• A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
• 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.
• All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
• An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
• And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
• Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
• Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions they pass no criticisms.
• Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
• But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
• But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
• 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.
• 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.
• Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
• Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
• Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.
• For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
• Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
• Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
• I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.
• I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
• 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.
• I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
• 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.
• In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
• In every parting there is an image of death.
• In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
• In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
• 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?
• 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.
• It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
• Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
• Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
• Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
• Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
• Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
• More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.