George Eliot Quotes
-
'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.
-
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.
-
... 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.
-
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.
-
There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth-are something better than youth.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!
-
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.
-
Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.
-
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.
-
Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
-
For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
-
What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
-
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!
-
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
-
Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.
-
Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger.
-
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.
-
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.
-
She hates everything that is not what she longs for.
-
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.
-
My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.