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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The intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear.
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Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
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We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.
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It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
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The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.
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Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.
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Men and women are but children of a larger growth.
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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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That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.
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There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles.
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Hear Everything and judge for yourself.
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A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.
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No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.
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Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.
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Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?
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Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.
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"Abroad," that large home of ruined reputations.
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The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
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More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
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The poverty of our imagination is no measure of say the world's resources. Our posterity will no doubt get fuel in ways that we are unable to devise for them.
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There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.
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Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.
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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.