George Eliot quote: "If I really care for you, if I try to think myself into your position and orientation, then the world is bettered by my effort at understanding and comprehension. If you respond to my effort by trying to extend the same sympathy and understanding to others in turn, then the betterment of the world has been minutely but significantly extended. We want people to feel with us, more than to act for us."

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and ye...
GEORGE ELIOT

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come ...
GEORGE ELIOT

Hell is oneself; Hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to esca...
GEORGE ELIOT

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think t...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass gr...
GEORGE ELIOT

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
GEORGE ELIOT

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen ea...
GEORGE ELIOT

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
GEORGE ELIOT

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
GEORGE ELIOT

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a mar...
GEORGE ELIOT

It is never too late to be what you might have been. •George Eliot It takes time to build a ca...
GEORGE ELIOT

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into part...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

The law's made to take care o' raskills.
GEORGE ELIOT

There are many victories worse than a defeat.
GEORGE ELIOT

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
GEORGE ELIOT

What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other.
GEORGE ELIOT

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
GEORGE ELIOT

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

Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are m...
GEORGE ELIOT

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and i...
GEORGE ELIOT

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
GEORGE ELIOT

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
GEORGE ELIOT

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sou...
GEORGE ELIOT

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, know...
GEORGE ELIOT

Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.
GEORGE ELIOT

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain ...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
GEORGE ELIOT

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.
GEORGE ELIOT

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

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

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
GEORGE ELIOT

Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it.
GEORGE ELIOT

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
GEORGE ELIOT

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

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husband...
GEORGE ELIOT

I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do bet...
GEORGE ELIOT

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
GEORGE ELIOT

Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness.
GEORGE ELIOT

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

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to inf...
GEORGE ELIOT

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means --one feels they are taking quite a liberty in go...
GEORGE ELIOT

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, brin...
GEORGE ELIOT

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass gr...
GEORGE ELIOT

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by...
GEORGE ELIOT

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is fa...
GEORGE ELIOT

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outwor...
GEORGE ELIOT

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls...
GEORGE ELIOT

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads ...
GEORGE ELIOT

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to ...
GEORGE ELIOT

Might, could, would --they are contemptible auxiliaries.
GEORGE ELIOT

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
GEORGE ELIOT

Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
GEORGE ELIOT

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine o...
GEORGE ELIOT

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
GEORGE ELIOT

It's them as take advantage that get advantage I this world.
GEORGE ELIOT

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are cer...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.
GEORGE ELIOT

But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of ...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an ...
GEORGE ELIOT

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
GEORGE ELIOT

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.
GEORGE ELIOT

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear decei...
GEORGE ELIOT

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles... but...
GEORGE ELIOT

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
GEORGE ELIOT

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight ...
GEORGE ELIOT

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
GEORGE ELIOT

A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understa...
GEORGE ELIOT

Ignorance... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go al...
GEORGE ELIOT

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
GEORGE ELIOT

For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or ...
GEORGE ELIOT

Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: --in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts ...
GEORGE ELIOT

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which w...
GEORGE ELIOT

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for th...
GEORGE ELIOT

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth li...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
GEORGE ELIOT

Those who trust us educate us.
GEORGE ELIOT

In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disco...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow...
GEORGE ELIOT

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
GEORGE ELIOT

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances?...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
GEORGE ELIOT

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be call...
GEORGE ELIOT

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
GEORGE ELIOT

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
GEORGE ELIOT

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk...
GEORGE ELIOT

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying s...
GEORGE ELIOT

Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first...
GEORGE ELIOT

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
GEORGE ELIOT

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
GEORGE ELIOT

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
GEORGE ELIOT

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
GEORGE ELIOT

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort t...
GEORGE ELIOT

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
GEORGE ELIOT

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves...
GEORGE ELIOT

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
GEORGE ELIOT

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
GEORGE ELIOT

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
GEORGE ELIOT

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffe...
GEORGE ELIOT

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.
GEORGE ELIOT

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?
GEORGE ELIOT

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
GEORGE ELIOT

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what mus...
GEORGE ELIOT

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
GEORGE ELIOT

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly r...
GEORGE ELIOT

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love o...
GEORGE ELIOT

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make th...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength ...
GEORGE ELIOT

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends...
GEORGE ELIOT

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living compan...
GEORGE ELIOT

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
GEORGE ELIOT

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
GEORGE ELIOT

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

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.
GEORGE ELIOT

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the ...
GEORGE ELIOT

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great cal...
GEORGE ELIOT

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.
GEORGE ELIOT

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and wome...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own dep...
GEORGE ELIOT

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human ...
GEORGE ELIOT

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
GEORGE ELIOT

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.
GEORGE ELIOT

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard ev...
GEORGE ELIOT

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear ...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere ...
GEORGE ELIOT

'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins w...
GEORGE ELIOT

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
GEORGE ELIOT

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
GEORGE ELIOT

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-disconte...
GEORGE ELIOT

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.
GEORGE ELIOT

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation a...
GEORGE ELIOT

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
GEORGE ELIOT

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights fo...
GEORGE ELIOT

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fol...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred ...
GEORGE ELIOT

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoi...
GEORGE ELIOT

The reward of one's duty is the power to fulfill another.
GEORGE ELIOT

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.
GEORGE ELIOT

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, wh...
GEORGE ELIOT

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while w...
GEORGE ELIOT

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities --a wil...
GEORGE ELIOT

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds -- not the will to inflict injuries and cli...
GEORGE ELIOT

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so i...
GEORGE ELIOT

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.
GEORGE ELIOT

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not...
GEORGE ELIOT

The sense of an entailed disadvantage -- the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a re...
GEORGE ELIOT

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue...
GEORGE ELIOT

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
GEORGE ELIOT

Blows are sarcasm's turned stupid.
GEORGE ELIOT

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruit...
GEORGE ELIOT

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and ma...
GEORGE ELIOT

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is bette...
GEORGE ELIOT

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
GEORGE ELIOT

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the go...
GEORGE ELIOT

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any...
GEORGE ELIOT

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
GEORGE ELIOT

He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were...
GEORGE ELIOT

Kisses honeyed by oblivion.
GEORGE ELIOT

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a hi...
GEORGE ELIOT

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
GEORGE ELIOT

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come t...
GEORGE ELIOT

Breed is stronger than pasture.
GEORGE ELIOT

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
GEORGE ELIOT

We must not inquire too curiously into motives... They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: th...
GEORGE ELIOT

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires ...
GEORGE ELIOT

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
GEORGE ELIOT

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

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
GEORGE ELIOT

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
GEORGE ELIOT

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
GEORGE ELIOT

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
GEORGE ELIOT

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measu...
GEORGE ELIOT

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputat...
GEORGE ELIOT

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
GEORGE ELIOT

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them...
GEORGE ELIOT

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
GEORGE ELIOT

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fow...
GEORGE ELIOT

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our eg...
GEORGE ELIOT

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
GEORGE ELIOT

But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of...
GEORGE ELIOT

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude — roots that can be pulled up.
GEORGE ELIOT

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous
GEORGE ELIOT

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

Hear Everything and judge for yourself
GEORGE ELIOT

Hatred is like fire -- it makes even light rubbish deadly.
GEORGE ELIOT

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while...
GEORGE ELIOT

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh th...
GEORGE ELIOT

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere...
GEORGE ELIOT

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

A difference of tastes in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
GEORGE ELIOT

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoug...
GEORGE ELIOT

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity
GEORGE ELIOT

George Eliot

Share:

Related

More George Eliot