George Eliot Quotes
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What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
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I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight-that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
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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.
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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.
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Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile.
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People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.
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It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.
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Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine and with human labor.
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Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love.
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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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I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.
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All things except reason and order are possible with a mob.
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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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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.
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I'm not one of those that can see the cat in the dairy and wonder what she's there for.
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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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I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.
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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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We cannot reform our forefathers.
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Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
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Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.
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Steady work turns genius to a loom.
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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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no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods