George Eliot

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

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

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

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

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

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

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

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

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

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

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.

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

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

Consequences are unpitying.

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

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

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

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

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

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

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

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

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

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

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

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.

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

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.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

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

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.