George Eliot Quotes
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All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet.
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Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
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All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!
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If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plainly dressed.
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Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.
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A proud woman who has learned to submit carries all her pride to the reinforcement of her submission, and looks down with severe superiority on all feminine assumption as unbecoming.
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My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
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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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What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
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Lord! Thou art with Thy people still; they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those that have not known Thee; open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them, and saying, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life"--see Thee hanging on the cross and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen.
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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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No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
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Few things hold the perception more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say.
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The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.
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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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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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Human experience is usually paradoxical.
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Of new acquaintances one can never be sure because one likes them one day that it will be so the next. Of old friends one is sure that it will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.
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Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
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All our ignorance brings us closer to death.
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It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
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I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone.
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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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Doesn't this quote just call up feelings of comfort and home? Comparing friendship to the nest a bird lives in and builds with loving determination reminds me that having a solid relationship takes work and dedication. And yet, when you succeed in crafting a friendship, you can rest in the comfort it provides.