George Eliot Quotes
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It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman’s End.
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As leopard feels at home with leopard.
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To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.
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A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.
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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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No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
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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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Resolve will melt no rocks. But it can scale them.
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It is necessary to me, not simply to be but to utter, and I require utterance of my friends.
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Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
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The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.
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The bow always strung ... will not do.
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Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness;
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The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.
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Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
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Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
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A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.
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I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged.
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Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
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Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love.
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How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends!
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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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The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
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Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.