George Eliot Quotes
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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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It is in the nature of foolish reasonings to seem good to the foolish reasoner.
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I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
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Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all.
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For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted.
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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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But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!
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Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
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A woman's rank Lies in the fulness of her womanhood: Therein alone she is royal.
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I flutter all ways, and fly in none.
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But then the need of being loved, the strongest need … in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride and soon threw it.
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Such patience have the heroes who begin, Sailing the first toward lands which others win. Jubal must dare as great beginners dare, Strike form's first way in matter rude and bare, And, yearning vaguely toward the plenteous choir Of the world's harvest, make one poor small lyre.
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What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
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Receptiveness is a rare and massive power, like fortitude.
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There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.
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I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.
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Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.
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Blameless people are always the most exasperating.
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The tread Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, And hears them never pause, but pass and die.
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I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.
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To fear the examination of any proposition apears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever.
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These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of.
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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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I am influenced at the present time by far higher considerations and by a nobler idea of duty than I ever was when I held the Evangelical belief.