George Eliot Quotes
-
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.
-
In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also.
-
... 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.
-
There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence.
-
If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.
-
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
-
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.
-
Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine and with human labor.
-
Sad as a wasted passion.
-
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
-
If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.
-
Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat.
-
Where you have friends you should not go to inns.
-
The impulse to confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and in our moments of spiritual need, the man to whom we have no tie but our common nature, seems nearer to us than mother, brother, or friend. Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, and those who sit with us at the same hearth, are often the farthest off from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good.
-
A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
-
The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'.
-
It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.
-
The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.
-
High achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes.
-
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
-
The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.
-
I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.
-
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
-
Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.