Inspiring Quotes by George Eliot
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There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others.

The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.

Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

Happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.

It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give.

I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.

How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?

As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.

Effective magic is transcendent nature.

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

Men and women are but children of a larger growth.

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

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.

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.

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

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

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

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

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

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

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

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