# Quote — George Eliot, Adam Bede

> How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?

- Author: [George Eliot](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot.md)
- Book: [Adam Bede](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/adam-bede.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Adam_Bede_(1859)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/adam-bede/how-is-it-that

## More from this book

> It was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/adam-bede/it-was-the.md)

> People who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/adam-bede/people-who-love.md)

> There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/adam-bede/there-is-no-despair.md)