What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.
George EliotFalsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.
George EliotSpeech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.
George EliotMelodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.
George EliotFor 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.
George Eliot