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.
George EliotConfound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.
George Eliot'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.
George EliotI think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it.
George Eliot