1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts – not to hurt others.

For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. “Character,” says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms,–“character is destiny.” But not the whole of our destiny.

The idea of duty – that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self – is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn’t have the end without them.

The mother’s love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.

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 es.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.

I have no courage to write much unless I am written to. I soon begin to think that there are plenty of other correspondents more interesting – so if you all want to hear from me you know the conditions.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.