George Eliot Quotes
-
in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.
-
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
-
One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.
-
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.
-
Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.
-
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.
-
Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.
-
Dark the Night, with breath all flowers, And tender broken voice that fills With ravishment the listening hours,-- Whisperings, wooings, Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills! Dark the night Yet is she bright, For in her dark she brings the mystic star, Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love, From some unknown afar.
-
The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach.
-
The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
-
There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.
-
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.
-
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
-
He had the superficial kindness of a good-humored, self-satisfied nature, that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties.
-
There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.
-
Anger seek it prey,-- Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Like not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will.
-
I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible.
-
The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.
-
Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.
-
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.
-
It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.
-
Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.
-
It's all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.
-
Hopes have precarious life. They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness.