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George Eliot

63 quotes

George Eliot (1819–1880) was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist, poet, and journalist who wrote some of the most psychologically nuanced fiction of the Victorian era. Her masterwork *Middlemarch* is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels in the English language.

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

— George Eliot

Wisdom

All Quotes by George Eliot

“No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.”

— George Eliot

Great

“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.”

— George Eliot

Science

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

— George Eliot

Love

“When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.”

— George Eliot

Great

“Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.”

— George Eliot

Travel

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

— George Eliot

Hope

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.”

— George Eliot

Love

“I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.”

— George Eliot

Home

“A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.”

— George Eliot

Happiness

“Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.”

— George Eliot

Truth

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

— George Eliot

Death

“Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.”

— George Eliot

History

“For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.”

— George Eliot

Best

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

— George Eliot

Peace

“The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.”

— George Eliot

Best

“In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.”

— George Eliot

Experience

“Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.”

— George Eliot

Truth

“I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.”

— George Eliot

Best

“In every parting there is an image of death.”

— George Eliot

Death

“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

Good