George Eliot Quotes
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We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.
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As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey.
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Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
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It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.
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Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine and with human labor.
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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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A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
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We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
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The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us.
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When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.
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‘I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known- ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.’
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The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.
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There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.
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Conscience is harder than our enemies, Knows more, accuses with more nicety.
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In the first moments when we come away from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged, to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny.
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We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.
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I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts.
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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.
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Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.
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You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.
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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.
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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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Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.
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The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.