Quotes by Eliot, George

"And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment."

Eliot, George on women
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"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."

Eliot, George on women   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha been left to the men."

Eliot, George on women   

"Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike."

Eliot, George on women   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means --one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies."

Eliot, George on mistakes   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man."

Eliot, George on mothers
4 fans of this quote   

"But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man."

Eliot, George on mothers   

"Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster."

Eliot, George on motives   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Eliot, George on obscurity   

"Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love."

Eliot, George on obsession   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we're so fond of it."

Eliot, George on obstinacy   

"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."

Eliot, George on opposition   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl."

Eliot, George on oppression   

"There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear."

Eliot, George on pain
8 fans of this quote   

"Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things."

Eliot, George on paradox   

"Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite."

Eliot, George on passion   

"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."

Eliot, George on past   

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

Eliot, George on perfection   

"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."

Eliot, George on perseverance   

"Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience."

Eliot, George on perspective   

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

Eliot, George on pity   

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

Eliot, George on platitudes   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: --in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures."

Eliot, George on poetry and poets   

"Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat."

Eliot, George on battles
5 fans of this quote   

"Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change --only to give stability to one beautiful moment."

Eliot, George on portraits   

"It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable."

Eliot, George on poverty and the poor   

"There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself."

Eliot, George on pride   

"There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life."

Eliot, George on privacy   

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

Eliot, George on professions and professionals   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy."

Eliot, George on progress   

"Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error."

Eliot, George on prophecy   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous."

Eliot, George on prophecy   

"What makes life dreary is the want of a motive."

Eliot, George on purpose   

"The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best."

Eliot, George on purpose   

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

Eliot, George on quarrels   

"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"

Eliot, George on quarrels
5 fans of this quote   

"We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been."

Eliot, George on reality   

"One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures."

Eliot, George on creation   

"The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions."

Eliot, George on relationship   

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

Eliot, George on repetition   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book