George Eliot Quotes
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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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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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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.
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Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.
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... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.
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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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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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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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I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God.
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I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.
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The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.
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Perhaps nothing ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.
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We are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us.
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The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.
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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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I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.
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Our thoughts are often worse than we are.
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Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
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It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.
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You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
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It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.
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Appearances have very little to do with happiness.
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A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.
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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.