George Eliot Quotes
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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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Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.
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I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.
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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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Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
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I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.
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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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But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
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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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In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.
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In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception.
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Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.
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For character too is a process and an unfoldingamong our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?
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I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.
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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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As they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men.
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He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched - he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.
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The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.
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For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.
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Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.
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Fate has carried me 'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast To pierce another.
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Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.
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Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.
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Inclination snatches argumentsTo make indulgence seem judicious choice.