606 Inspiring Quotes by George Eliot

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

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

Animals are such agreeable friends -- they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

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

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.

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.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

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

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

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.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

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

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

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

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

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

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

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

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

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

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.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

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

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

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

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.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

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

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

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.

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

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

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

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.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

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

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.

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

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?

Breed is stronger than pasture.

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

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

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

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

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

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

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

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.

Is this not a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love -- that makes life and nature harmonize.

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.

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

It's never too late to be who you might have been.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

We must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.

Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers.

We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.

But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life -- to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.

Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.

People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.

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

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

Hopes have precarious life.
They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off
In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness.

A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.

Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary.

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life──the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within──can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.

May I reach That purest heaven -- be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.

It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge.

In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.

I think I am quite wicked with roses. I like to gather them, and smell them till they have no scent left.

There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth-are something better than youth.

We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent, we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; but a moment is room wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outlash of a murderous thought and the sharp bakcward stroke of repetance.

When one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

The worst of misery
Is when a nature framed for noblest things
Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
Gasping from out the shallows.

Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.

She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel -- that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.

Perhaps the wind Wails so in winter for the summers dead, And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries For what has been and is not.

You are discontented with the world because you can't get just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's a world where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and misery, and tainted with pollution.

After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.

What secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an ‘appointment') which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?

Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

Hurt, he'll never be hurt -- he's made to hurt other people.

A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?

It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

It is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.

Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so .

Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.

Fate has carried me 'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast To pierce another.

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

Men and women are but children of a larger growth.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. Suffering can be likened to a baptism -- the passing over the threshold of pain and grief and anguish to claim a new state of being.

I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of.

Effective magic is transcendent nature.