George Eliot
77 quotations
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
Blows are sarcasm's turned stupid.
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.
Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.