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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Particular lies may speak a general truth.
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You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.
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Two angels guide The path of man, both aged and yet young. As angels are, ripening through endless years, On one he leans: some call her Memory, And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet, With deep mysterious accords: the other, Floating above, holds down a lamp with streams A light divine and searching on the earth, Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew, Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked But for Tradition; we walk evermore To higher paths by brightening Reason's lamp.
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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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A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.
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The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
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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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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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A serious ape whom none take seriously,Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nutsBy hard buffoonery.
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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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We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.
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We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.
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If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking.
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It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.
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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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There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart.
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There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.
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The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.
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I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
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Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.
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"Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.
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The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.
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It is necessary to me, not simply to be but to utter, and I require utterance of my friends.