George Eliot Quotes

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

My father said that a silent person is trying to hide something.

Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

People are always giving you credit for really wanting to say more than you said.

Silence is a statement that is open to gross misinterpretation.

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

It's like the brooding hen sitting over a china egg.

If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it.

It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

We can lie in the language of dress or try to tell the truth; but unless we are naked and bald, it is impossible to be silent.

My mother kept all my awards on the sideboard of her front room, and she polished them. She polished everything religiously. And it doesn't take long for the very thin layer of gold to disappear and the base metal underneath to show through.

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

Just because a woman is silent does not mean she agrees.

She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.

Silence hides nothing. Words conceal.

[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say— to them silence is simple and easy.

All is not gold that glisters.

It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

Fools, your reward is neither here nor there.

Reticences are as revealing as avowals.