Quotes from George Eliot

There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth-are something better than youth.

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.

I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson.

Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

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

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.

The human heart finds nowhere shelter but in human kind.

Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.

For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.

The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.

Life would be no better than candlelight tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.

Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.

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

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.