George Eliot Quotes
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Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
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What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman's face? And is there any harmony of tints that has such stirring of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice?
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O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them.
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Life's a vast sea That does its mighty errand without fail, Painting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.
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There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.
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Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.
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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.
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Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.
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Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine and with human labor.
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... one's own faults are always a heavy chain to drag through life and one can't help groaning under the weight now and then.
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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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If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
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While the arm is strong to strike and heave, Let soul and arm give shape that will abide...
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As leopard feels at home with leopard.
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A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
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Steady work turns genius to a loom.
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No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
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There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?
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How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends!
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Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
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Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly.
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Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.
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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.
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But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.