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Marriage Quotes by George Eliot

46 Marriage quotes by George Eliot

All Marriage quotes George Eliot’s page

A husband’s jokes are taken with patient smiles, showing how partners often tolerate each other’s quirks. The quotes talk about turning away anger and having calm discussions instead of shouting. They also point out how society expects men and women to behave differently in marriage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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More by George Eliot

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on…

Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.

The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from…

“[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range…

“Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out…

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

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.

And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.

“But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure…

“But any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells…

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial…

“Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt…