George Eliot Quotes
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Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
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It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman’s End.
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It is a fact capable of amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed towards a new acquaintance of their own sex, because she has points of inferiority.
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There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.
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If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.
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To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.
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Autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs.
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What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.
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Receptiveness is a rare and massive power, like fortitude.
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It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop.
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It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened?
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A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
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That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.
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Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.
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I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.
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His smile is sweetened by his gravity.
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One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.
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Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.
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He said within his soul, ''This is the end: O'er all the earth to where the-heavens bend And hem men's travel, I have breathed my soul: I lie here now the remnant of that whole, The embers of a life, a lonely pain; As far-off rivers to my thirst were vain, So of my mighty years nought comes to me again'.
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The fact is, both callers and work thicken - the former sadly interfering with the latter.
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A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts." —WORDSWORTH.
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And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch
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There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
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You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.