Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.
George EliotCharacter is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.
George EliotIt is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.
George EliotMarriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than - than those we were married to, it would be no use. I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear, but it murders our marriage, and then the marriage stays with us like a murder, and everything else is gone.
George Eliot