George Eliot quotes

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

— George Eliot

“The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”

— George Eliot

“He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.”

— George Eliot

“All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.”

— George Eliot

“I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.”

— George Eliot

“We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.”

— George Eliot

“Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.”

— George Eliot

“No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.”

— George Eliot