Marriage Quotes by George Eliot

... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.

— George Eliot

“I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.”

— George Eliot

You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.

— George Eliot

Husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order,

— George Eliot

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

— George Eliot

“Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?”

— George Eliot

In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also.

— George Eliot

“She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was.”

— George Eliot

There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a…

— George Eliot

I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like…

— George Eliot

“I know the way o' wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, and then they turn round on one and…

— George Eliot

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much.…

— George Eliot

“Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before…

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea - but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only…

— George Eliot

Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and the sea…

— George Eliot

“Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl…

— George Eliot

That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great…

— George Eliot

“It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshiping this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but…

— George Eliot

“She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from…

— George Eliot

“A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling their…

— George Eliot

“... she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the…

— George Eliot

“…whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable,…

— George Eliot

“Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a…

— George Eliot

“goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the slightest chance—on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we…

— George Eliot

There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have…

— George Eliot

“In general, one may be sure that whenever a marriage of any mark takes place, male acquaintances are likely to pity the…

— George Eliot

“Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she…

— George Eliot

“Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a…

— George Eliot

I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment…

— George Eliot

“She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she…

— George Eliot

That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.

— George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough…

— George Eliot

“But the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.”

— George Eliot

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

— George Eliot

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

— George Eliot

“But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.”

— George Eliot

When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a…

— George Eliot

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,--whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,--which afterwards subside…

— George Eliot

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to…

— George Eliot