George Eliot Quotes

“A woman may get to love by degrees — the best fire does not flare up the soonest.”

“Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before — consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.”

“He was like the rooster who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.”

“How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love?

Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?”

“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.”

“In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.”

“It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.”

“On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings.”

“One can say everything best over a meal.”

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”

“Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!”

“There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.”

“We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.”

“We hand folks over to God's mercy and show none ourselves.”

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life – to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

“When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”