George Eliot Quotes
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Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
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The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.
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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.
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Appearances have very little to do with happiness.
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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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Correct English is the slang of prigs.
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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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There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.
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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.
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Things are achieved when they are well begun.
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Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it.
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The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey-double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day.
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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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These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.
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A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.
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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
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He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself.
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Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.
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Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life──the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within──can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
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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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It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
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Blows are sarcasms turned stupid.
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Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.