George Eliot Quotes
-
Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
-
We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not.
-
Trouble always seems heavier when it is only one's thought and not one's bodily activity that is employed about it.
-
The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.
-
When we are dead : it is the living only who cannot be forgiven the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind .
-
We cannot reform our forefathers.
-
But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
-
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!
-
Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.
-
Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.
-
Joy is the best of wine.
-
Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
-
Boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they are.
-
Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.
-
But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?
-
Hear Everything and judge for yourself.
-
A serious ape whom none take seriously,Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nutsBy hard buffoonery.
-
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.
-
It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness-calling their denial knowledge.
-
Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: - in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.
-
For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal-this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.