1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

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.

Wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.

How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flute-like voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer, deeper music.

A good solid bit of work lasts.

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'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.