George Eliot Quotes
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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.
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Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
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Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.
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Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.
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Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.
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He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself.
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The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.
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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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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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What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!
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The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.
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Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it.
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It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
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The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.
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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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I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God.
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Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.
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Things are achieved when they are well begun.
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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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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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The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation, as the moment of finding an idea.
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There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that-to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
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There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
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We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not.