George Eliot Quotes
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Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.
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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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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.
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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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Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.
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I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.
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She hates everything that is not what she longs for.
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There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.
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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.
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Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
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No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
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... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.
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There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
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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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There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.
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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.
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There are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them what they're used to.
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A good horse makes short miles.
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But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?
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Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.
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We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.
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The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach.
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I protest against any absolute conclusion.
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We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.