George Eliot Quotes
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Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.
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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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One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
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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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Trouble's made us kin.
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A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.
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Appearances have very little to do with happiness.
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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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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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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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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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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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Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
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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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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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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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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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When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.
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Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it.
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Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.
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Jubal had a frame Fashioned to finer senses, which became A yearning for some hidden soul of things, Some outward touch complete on inner springs That vaguely moving bred a lonely pain, A want that did but stronger grow with gain Of all good else, as spirits might be sad For lack of speech to tell us they are glad.
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It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.
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It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
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The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us.