George Eliot Quotes
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The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.
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Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
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Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.
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It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.
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More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
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Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.
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Hatred is like fire, it makes even light rubbish deadly.
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When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.
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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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Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.
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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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Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.
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I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight-that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
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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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... 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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The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
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I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.
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As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.
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Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.
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Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger.
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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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You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
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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's times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke will be broke.