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Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.
George Eliot -
Man finds his pathways: at first they were foot-tracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness; now they are swift and invisible: his thought dives through the ocean, and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways yet? What reaches him, stays with him, rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its pathway.
George Eliot
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Boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they are.
George Eliot -
What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
George Eliot -
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.
George Eliot -
Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babies; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God Almighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.
George Eliot -
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.
George Eliot -
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.
George Eliot
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Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it.
George Eliot -
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.
George Eliot -
Teach love, for that is what you are.
George Eliot -
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?
George Eliot -
We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not.
George Eliot -
I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha been left to the men.
George Eliot
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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.
George Eliot -
It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.
George Eliot -
There are but two sorts of government: one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest.
George Eliot -
The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation, as the moment of finding an idea.
George Eliot -
Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.
George Eliot -
Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.
George Eliot
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The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.
George Eliot -
It's all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.
George Eliot -
A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.
George Eliot -
The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of sorrow.
George Eliot