George Eliot Quotes
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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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No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
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It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.
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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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in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.
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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.
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The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.
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... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.
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There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.
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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.
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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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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.
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Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.
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One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.
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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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Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.
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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.
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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.
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But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?
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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.
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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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Hopes have precarious life. They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness.
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Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.
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Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.