George Eliot Quotes
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I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.
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Justice is like the kingdom of God--it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.
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'Twas easy following where invention trod - All eyes can see when light flows out from God. And thus did Jubal to his race reveal Music their larger soul, where woe and weal Filling the resonant chords, the song, the dance, Moved with a wider-winged utterance.
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It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.
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I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.
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In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.
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Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.
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I have no courage to write much unless I am written to. I soon begin to think that there are plenty of other correspondents more interesting - so if you all want to hear from me you know the conditions.
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You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well.
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All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet.
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In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.
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To my thinking, it is more pitiable to bore than to be bored.
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I don't remember ever being see-saw, when I'd made my mind up that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow creatures worse off instead o' better.
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Don't judge a book by its cover.
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But then the need of being loved, the strongest need … in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride and soon threw it.
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I shall never love anybody. I can't love people. I hate them.' 'The time will come, dear, the time will come.
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Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off.
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A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
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Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood.
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Bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.
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It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.
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What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.
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I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
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As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey.