George Eliot Quotes

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

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

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

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

In every parting there is an image of death.

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

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

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

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

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

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

Breed is stronger than pasture.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

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

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

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

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.

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

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.