George Eliot Quotes

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.

~ George Eliot

Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

~ 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

Breed is stronger than pasture.

~ George Eliot

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

~ George Eliot

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot

What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

~ George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

~ George Eliot

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot

To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years. The image is never marred. There's no dissappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

~ George Eliot

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

~ George Eliot

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

~ George Eliot

What makes life dreary is want of motive.

~ George Eliot

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

~ George Eliot