George Eliot Quotes
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A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.
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A good solid bit of work lasts.
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Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: - in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.
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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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Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
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It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.
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It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.
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What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!
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It's all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.
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Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.
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It is easier to quell emotion than to incur the consequences of venting it.
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... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, – it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.
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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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Hatred is like fire, it makes even light rubbish deadly.
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In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
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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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There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better.
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All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!
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When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.
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We are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us.
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The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.
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We have all our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.
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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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Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .