George Eliot Quotes
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The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.
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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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Particular lies may speak a general truth.
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But let the wise be warned against too great readiness to explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
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It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.
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Our consciences are not all of the same pattern.
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It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.
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I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offense. ... Everyone who contributes to the 'too much' of literature is doing grave social injury.
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It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.
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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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We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.
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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.
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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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She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
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I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
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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.
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Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.
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There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief — a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.
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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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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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We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not.
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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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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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Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?