George Eliot Quotes
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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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Religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
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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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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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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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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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After all, the true seeing is within.
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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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The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
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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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What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.
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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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The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
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Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
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In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fiber of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
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No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
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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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The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach.
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... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.
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But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?
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A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
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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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A good horse makes short miles.
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Dark the Night, with breath all flowers, And tender broken voice that fills With ravishment the listening hours,-- Whisperings, wooings, Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills! Dark the night Yet is she bright, For in her dark she brings the mystic star, Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love, From some unknown afar.