Quotes from George Eliot

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, — if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass...

Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.

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

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

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

But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire; the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.

But certain winds will make men's temper bad.

You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly

A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.

As they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men.

What is opportunity to the man who cant use it?

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

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

Men and women are but children of a larger growth.

I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts.

But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.

There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better.

Until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid--too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority.