George Eliot Quotes
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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's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart.
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Brothers are so unpleasant.
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Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
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When you see fair hair Be pitiful.
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People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes.
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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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When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.
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Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
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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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There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence.
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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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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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We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.
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A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.
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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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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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I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged.
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Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babies; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God Almighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.
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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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College mostly makes people like bladders-just good for nothing but t'hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.
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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration.
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Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.