George Eliot Quotes
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If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.
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Who can proveWit to be witty when with deeper groundDulness intuitive declares wit dull?
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May every soul that touches mine - be it the slightest contact - get there from some good; some little grace; one kindly thought; one aspiration yet unfelt; one bit of courage for the darkening sky; one gleam of faith to brave the thickening ills of life; one glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering mists - to make this life worthwhile.
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All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
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Perhaps the windWails so in winter for the summers dead,And all sad sounds are nature's funeral criesFor what has been and is not.
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There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room.
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And we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.
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If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas.
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How oft review; each finding, like a friend, Something to blame, and something to commend.
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Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!
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I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
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The disappointments of life can never, any more than its pleasures, be estimated singly; and the healthiest and most agreeable of men is exposed to that coincidence of various vexations, each heightening the effect of the other, which may produce in him something corresponding to the spontaneous and externally unaccountable moodiness of the morbid and disagreeable.
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It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give.
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Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds ...
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I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.
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In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.
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What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
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Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
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Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
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That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger - not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.
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In the days when the spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak--there might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palled undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.
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Comments on The Lifted Veil with a motto for it used in the 'Cabinet Edition' of her works (1878), in a letter to John Blackwood (28 February 1873), published in George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals (1885), Vol. 4
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The fact is, both callers and work thicken - the former sadly interfering with the latter.
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Net the large fish and you are sure to have the small fry.