George Eliot Quotes
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They kissed each other with a deep joy. What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
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The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.
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The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.
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Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.
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Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.
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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.
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But very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.
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Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.
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I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.
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Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.
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One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
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... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.
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I am open to conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one must be eaten and the other paid.
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Sad as a wasted passion.
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Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
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Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
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It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a 'public.'
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How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice . . .
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Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat.
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I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.
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You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback.
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It was a still afternoon - the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.
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We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.
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Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.