George Eliot

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

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

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.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

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

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.

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

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

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

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

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

In every parting there is an image of death.

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

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

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

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.

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