I. Frost's Selected Quotations

Everything at Amazon by and about: George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819-1880)

George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819-1880):

It is never too late to become what you might have been. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Music sweeps by me as a messenger carrying a message that is not for me. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

There is no private life which is not determined by a wider public life. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

'Tis God gives skill, But not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio STRADIVARI's violins Without Antonio. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Breed is stronger than pasture George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Excessive literary production is a social offense George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

I hold it a blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

I like trying [to get pregnant]. I'm not so sure about childbirth. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

He was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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 [Mary Ann Evans]

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Adventure is not outside man; it is within. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Consequences are unpitying. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other? George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

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. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

"There are many victories worse than a defeat." George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

"I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates." George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

"Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult." George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

I'm not denyin' that women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match men. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

I am open to conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one must be eaten and the other paid. Those are my only prejudices. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]