George Eliot Quotes
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Teach love, for that is what you are.
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Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.
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The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.
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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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Dear Friends all, A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you -- good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen. People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious or affectionate.
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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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In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.
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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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The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.
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The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.
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Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.
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It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream.
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Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.
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Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
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A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.
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Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
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I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.
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A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful hole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.
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We are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us.
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in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.
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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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But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?
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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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It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.