Quotes By George Eliot

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

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.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

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.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

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

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

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.

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.

Consequences are unpitying.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

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

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.

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.

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