The Best George Eliot quotes

Love supreme defies all sophistry. — George Eliot

It must be sad to outlive aught we love. — George Eliot

Teach love, for that is what you are. — George Eliot

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration. — George Eliot

A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts. — George Eliot

Knightly love is blent with reverence As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue. — George Eliot

It is a wonderful subduer–this need of love, this hunger of the heart. — George Eliot

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love. — George Eliot

Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love. — George Eliot

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

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it? — George Eliot

I cherish my childish loves––the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged. — George Eliot

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

Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. — George Eliot

Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness. — George Eliot

I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts. — George Eliot

It is not true that love makes all things easy, it makes us chose things that are difficult. — George Eliot

Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. — George Eliot

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. — George Eliot

I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind. — George Eliot

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult. — George Eliot

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with. — George Eliot

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth. — George Eliot

Particular lies may speak a general truth. — George Eliot

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through. — George Eliot

An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. — George Eliot

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . . — George Eliot

Sweet Truth is a queen proud and mighty––Her throne is in heaven above. — George Eliot

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings–much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. — George Eliot

There’s truth in wine, and there may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it’s truth worth my knowing, is another question. — George Eliot

The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer. — George Eliot

The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf. — George Eliot

Effective magic is transcendent nature. — George Eliot

It is in the nature of foolish reasonings to seem good to the foolish reasoner. — George Eliot

He had the superficial kindness of a good–humored, self–satisfied nature, that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties. — George Eliot

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness. — George Eliot

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong–doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature. — George Eliot

Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don’t know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning. — George Eliot

It is difficult for woman to try to be anything good when she is not believed in. — 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 happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. — George Eliot

I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly. — George Eliot

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. — George Eliot

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother. — George Eliot

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music. — George Eliot

Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. — George Eliot

A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She’d make them newly, being what she was. — George Eliot

Women know no perfect love: Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong; Man clings because the being whom he loves Is weak and needs him. — George Eliot

They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit. — George Eliot

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline. — George Eliot

In the ages since Adam’s marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also. — George Eliot

There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer. — George Eliot

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. — George Eliot

And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better. — George Eliot

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men. — George Eliot

Men and women are but children of a larger growth. — George Eliot

A woman may get to love by degrees–the best fire does not flare up the soonest. — George Eliot

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. — George Eliot

Women should be protected from anyone’s exercise of unrighteous power… but then, so should every other living creature. — George Eliot

I’d sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It’s better to know one’s robbed than to think one’s going to be murdered. — George Eliot

Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs. — George Eliot

Folks as have no mind to be o’ use have allays the luck to be out o’ the road when there’s anything to be done. — George Eliot

You must mind and not lower the Church in people’s eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing. — George Eliot

In poor Rosamond’s mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in. — George Eliot

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic. — George Eliot

Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

Yes, Isaac Taylor, who has just published ‘The World of Mind,’ is the Isaac Taylor, author of the ‘Natural History of Enthusiasm.’ I dare say by this time there is a want of fatty particles in his brain. — George Eliot

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath. — George Eliot

I don’t mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves. — George Eliot

It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. — George Eliot

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy. — George Eliot

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

There is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequences of his passions––does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread. — George Eliot

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

The fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading. — George Eliot

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty. — George Eliot

I do not belIeve that any wrIter has ever exposed thIs bovaryIsme, the human wIll to see thIngs as they are not, more clearly than shakespeare. — George Eliot

Nature repairs her ravages,––repairs them with her sunshine and with human labor. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

The human heart finds nowhere shelter but in human kind. — George Eliot

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

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice. — George Eliot

In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception. — George Eliot

The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence. — George Eliot

Of all forms of human error, prophesy is the most avoidable. — George Eliot

Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth. — George Eliot

Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow. — George Eliot

The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions. — George Eliot

There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the fire of enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape. — George Eliot

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

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! — George Eliot

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty–it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. — George Eliot

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality. — George Eliot

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

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage i’ this world. — George Eliot

This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry’s got a finger in it. — George Eliot

We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us. — George Eliot

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage I’ this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it’s brought to ’em. — George Eliot

So to live is heaven; to make undying music in the world. — George Eliot

So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. — George Eliot

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism. — George Eliot

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. — George Eliot

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

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities. — George Eliot

I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world … profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove. — George Eliot

There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room. — George Eliot

We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom. — George Eliot

In no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner–service. — George Eliot