George Eliot Quotes
-
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
-
If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.
-
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.
-
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.
-
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
-
To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.
-
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.
-
She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
-
The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.
-
A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?
-
It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.
-
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
-
Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.
-
There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence.
-
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
-
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.
-
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.
-
Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babies; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God Almighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.
-
... 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.
-
... it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.
-
It is difficult for woman to try to be anything good when she is not believed in.
-
Where you have friends you should not go to inns.
-
We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.
-
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.