George Eliot Quotes
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Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.
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A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.
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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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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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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 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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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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Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.
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Until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid--too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority.
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There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
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The bow always strung ... will not do.
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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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It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.
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It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?
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Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
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If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you'd think I should to share those good things; but I should better to share in your trouble and your labour.
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Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.
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There is no short-cut no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must still be trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.
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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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As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love - when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them.
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One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.
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A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.