George Eliot Quotes
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How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends!
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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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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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Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.
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It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.
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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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It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.
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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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Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.
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Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs.
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There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
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You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.
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The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
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The usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles. ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.
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But she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.
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Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.
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Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.
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Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.
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No eye saw him, while with loving pride Each voice with each in praise of Jubal vied. Must he in conscious trance, dumb, helpless lie While all that ardent kindred passed him by? His flesh cried out to live with living men, And join that soul which to the inward ken Of all the hymning train was present there.
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The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.
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Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.
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Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.
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We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.
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There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.