George Eliot Quotes
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When you've been used to doing things, and they've been taken away from you, it's as if your hands had been cut off, and you felt the fingers as are of no use to you.
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There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.
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That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled.
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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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A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.
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Creeds of terror.
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Kisses honeyed by oblivion.
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In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.
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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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Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
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What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
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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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The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.
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There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination.
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O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's search To vaster issues.
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Inclination snatches argumentsTo make indulgence seem judicious choice.
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The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.
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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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'Jubal,' the face said, 'I am thy loved Past, The soul that makes thee one from first to last. I am the angel of thy life and death, Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath. Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride Who blest thy lot above all men's beside?
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Our life is determined for us - and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing and only think of bearing what is laid upon us and doing what is given us to do.
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It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found - in loving obedience.
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Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
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A blush is no language; only a dubious flag - signal which may mean either of two contradictories.
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Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.