George Eliot Quotes
-
Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
-
In the first moments when we come away from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged, to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny.
-
The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.
-
Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so.
-
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.
-
Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.
-
That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.
-
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.
-
Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.
-
Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.
-
How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice . . .
-
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.
-
It was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.
-
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.
-
Worldly faces, never look so worldly as at a funeral.
-
It is difficult for woman to try to be anything good when she is not believed in.
-
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.
-
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
-
Things are achieved when they are well begun.
-
The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.
-
Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.
-
Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it.
-
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.
-
Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough.