George Eliot Quotes
-
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.
-
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.
-
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.
-
Shepperton Church was a very different looking building five-and-twenty years ago. To be sure, its substantial stone tower looks at you through its intelligent eye, the clock, with the friendly expression of former days; but in everything else what changes!
-
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.
-
One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be a better man.
-
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.
-
The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.
-
It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don't give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade.
-
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles.
-
Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.
-
Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.
-
It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
-
Hear Everything and judge for yourself.
-
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.
-
Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.
-
The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.
-
Things are achieved when they are well begun.
-
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.
-
Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.
-
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
-
A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.
-
That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.
-
There is so much to read and the days are so short! I get more hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger.