Quotes from George Eliot

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

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

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

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

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence.

What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life — to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

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

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

Oh, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

And he could glance at her continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams stole through the thick apple-tree boughs and rested on her round cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her.

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

Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty.

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

However, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself...

We must not sit still and look for miracles up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

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

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

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.