George Eliot Quotes
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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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I shall do everything it becomes me to do.
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When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.
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For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
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Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
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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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Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.
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It is easier to quell emotion than to incur the consequences of venting it.
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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. . . .
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A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.
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For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal-this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.
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The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.
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I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.
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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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Hopes have precarious life. They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness.
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'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.
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A good solid bit of work lasts.
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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.
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It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream.
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A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.
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The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.
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It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.
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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.
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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.