George Eliot Quotes
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If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.
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A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
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The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state.
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There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.
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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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She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, - when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent.
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So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood; doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot; but it is gone forever from our imagination, and we can only believe in the joy of childhood.
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You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.
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How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true - the religion that is strength to the healthy - is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive.
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The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.
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Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.
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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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But a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited-a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage- a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.
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Bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.
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The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.
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Such patience have the heroes who begin, Sailing the first toward lands which others win. Jubal must dare as great beginners dare, Strike form's first way in matter rude and bare, And, yearning vaguely toward the plenteous choir Of the world's harvest, make one poor small lyre.
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Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.
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Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.
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The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.
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But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.
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To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.
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In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.
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A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
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I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.