George Eliot Quotes
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Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
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The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.
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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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What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
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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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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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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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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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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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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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When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.
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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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I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.
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I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
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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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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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Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
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It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.
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... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.
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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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Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
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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.