Quotes by George Eliot

“A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.”

“You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to y...”

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light ...”

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or ...”

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in...”

“Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love comi...”

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

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

“Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.”

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me ...”

“Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”

“I told you from the beginningas soon as I couldI told you I was afraid of myself." There was a piteous pleading in the low murmur in which Deronda turned his ear only. Her face afflicted him too mu...”

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

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

“No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.”

“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...”

“Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual lifethe life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within itcan understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity int...”

“You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become o...”

“I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is.”

“I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.”