George Eliot Quotes
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It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream.
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She hates everything that is not what she longs for.
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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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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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... 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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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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What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
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How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice; it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne and flows by the path of obedience.
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Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means -one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.
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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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Loquacity with tongue or pen is its own reward -- or, punishment.
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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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The sweetest of all success is that which one wins by hard exertion.
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It's them as take advantage that get advantage I' this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em.
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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.
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Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries.
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Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
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One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.
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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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Teach love, for that is what you are.
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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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A bachelor's children are always young: they're immortal children - always lisping, waddling, helpless, and with a chance of turning out good.
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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.
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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.