What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
GEORGE ELIOTGenius … is necessarily intolerant of fetters.
More George Eliot Quotes
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I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.
GEORGE ELIOT -
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
GEORGE ELIOT -
In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past-sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.
GEORGE ELIOT -
I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
GEORGE ELIOT -
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Your trouble’s easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Character is not cut in marble – it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
GEORGE ELIOT -
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.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.
GEORGE ELIOT -
It is pleasant to have a kind word now and then when one is not near enough to have a kind glance or a hearty shake by the hand.
GEORGE ELIOT -
… it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.
GEORGE ELIOT -
It’s never too late to be who you were meant to be.
GEORGE ELIOT -
What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.
GEORGE ELIOT -
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
GEORGE ELIOT -
No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
GEORGE ELIOT -
That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.
GEORGE ELIOT -
We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one’s life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.
GEORGE ELIOT -
The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.
GEORGE ELIOT