George Eliot Quotes
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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.
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When one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent.
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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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I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
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Teach love, for that is what you are.
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It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.
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"Abroad," that large home of ruined reputations.
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It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicians can wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas.
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We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.
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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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Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.
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Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.
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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.
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Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
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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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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.
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It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.
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What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.
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In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
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Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger.
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No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
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We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
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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 will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.