George Eliot Quotes

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.

By George Eliot

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

By George Eliot

Consequences are unpitying.

By George Eliot

Childhood has no forebodings, but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

By George Eliot

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow

By George Eliot

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more that they can choose their birthplace, or their father or mother.

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By 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.

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade.

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

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.

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

An age at which many men are not quite common - at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to

By 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.

By George Eliot

. . . you know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.

By George Eliot

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

By George Eliot

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

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

By George Eliot

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

By George Eliot