George Eliot Quotes

trouble always seems heavier when it is only one's thought and not one's bodily activity that is employed about it.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

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?

We have all our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.

He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself.

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.

That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.

... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.

Shepperton Church was a very different looking building five-and-twenty years ago. To be sure, its substantial stone tower looks at you through its intelligent eye, the clock, with the friendly expression of former days; but in everything else what changes!

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

I shall do everything it becomes me to do.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power... but then, so should every other living creature.

Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.

There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly

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.

The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey-double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.

We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.

Education is an asset no man can take away.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?

I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of.

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.

And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.

We cannot reform our forefathers.

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life──the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within──can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.

It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don't give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade.

Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.

Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.

The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of the times, a chief obstacle to true culture.

When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.

... it is seldom a medical man has true religious views--there is too much pride of intellect.

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love-this hunger of the heart-as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.