George Eliot Quotes
-
Our thoughts are often worse than we are.
-
Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor.
-
I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
-
in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.
-
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.
-
There are but two sorts of government: one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest.
-
Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.
-
To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.
-
Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.
-
I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till now.
-
There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?
-
But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?
-
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
-
It is hard to believe long together that anything is "worth while," unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.
-
Trouble always seems heavier when it is only one's thought and not one's bodily activity that is employed about it.
-
Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.
-
Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.
-
It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.
-
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
-
If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking.
-
It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.