George Eliot Quotes
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Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
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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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A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.
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I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.
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We are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us.
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One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.
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... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.
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There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.
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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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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 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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Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.
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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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The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,--whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,--which afterwards subside into cheerful peace.
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Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger.
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He had the superficial kindness of a good-humored, self-satisfied nature, that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties.
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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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It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.
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But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?
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No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
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Religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
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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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Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.