George Eliot Quotes
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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.
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Men and women are but children of a larger growth.
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That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.
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Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
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If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.
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What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
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He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose. . . .
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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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The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
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Until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid--too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority.
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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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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.
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There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.
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Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so.
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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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Jubal had a frame Fashioned to finer senses, which became A yearning for some hidden soul of things, Some outward touch complete on inner springs That vaguely moving bred a lonely pain, A want that did but stronger grow with gain Of all good else, as spirits might be sad For lack of speech to tell us they are glad.
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I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.
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Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.
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The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.
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Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs.
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Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.
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As leopard feels at home with leopard.
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It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a person's death consecrates him or her anew to us. It is as if life were not sacred too, as if it were comparatively a small thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother or sister who has to climb the whole toilsome mountain with us. It seems as if all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.
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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.