Inspiring Quotes by George Eliot - Page 2

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

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

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

"The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words"

"The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief"

"The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world"

"The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life"

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

"There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope"

"There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism"

"There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury"

"There are many victories worse than a defeat"

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

"Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive"

"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"

"No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters"

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

"Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries"

"Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest"

"Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty"

"In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations"

"In every parting there is an image of death"

"In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness"

"Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness"

"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"

"No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference"

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

"Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult"

"Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure"

"Excessive literary production is a social offense"

"Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world"

"You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know"

"You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl"

"Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night"

"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"

"Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it"

"When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion"

"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand"

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

"For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love"

"The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities"

"When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity"

"Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through"

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

"What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories"

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

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

"Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline"

"We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves"

"Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking"

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