Quotes from George Eliot

she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that men would be so, and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

Even much stronger mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best. The theater of all my actions is fallen, said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead, and they are fortunate who get a theater where the audience demands their best.

She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force.

To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from

Contented speckled hens, industriously scratching for the rarely-found corn, may sometimes do more for a sick heart than a grove of nightingales; there is something irresistibly calming in the unsentimental cheeriness of top-knotted pullets, unpetted sheep-dogs, and patient cart-horses enjoying a drink of muddy water.

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

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker," But the truth is, gossip hurts.

What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth while to set about anything we are disinclined to.

so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it.

A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that sort. I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it worth while. And