George Eliot quotes

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.”

— George Eliot

“Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.”

— George Eliot

“The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.”

— George Eliot

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

— 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.”

— George Eliot

“People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.”

— George Eliot

“A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.”

— George Eliot

“An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Excessive literary production is a social offense.”

— George Eliot

“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.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.”

— George Eliot

“Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.”

— George Eliot

“Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.”

— George Eliot

“That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.”

— George Eliot

“The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.”

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“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.”

— George Eliot

“But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.”

— George Eliot

“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.”

— George Eliot