George Eliot Quotes
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The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.
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Life's a vast sea That does its mighty errand without fail, Painting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.
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A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.
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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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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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It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.
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Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.
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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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I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
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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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The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.
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But she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.
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When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.
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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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There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
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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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What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!
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One of the tortures of jealousy is, that it can never turn away its eyes from the thing that pains it.
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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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Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.
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Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it.
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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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Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.
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Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit.