George Eliot Quotes

and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

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.

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.

... one's own faults are always a heavy chain to drag through life and one can't help groaning under the weight now and then.

Doesn't this quote just call up feelings of comfort and home? Comparing friendship to the nest a bird lives in and builds with loving determination reminds me that having a solid relationship takes work and dedication. And yet, when you succeed in crafting a friendship, you can rest in the comfort it provides.

... when one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing.

I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat.

Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.

Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood.

But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!

Subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly impossible, and what will be the remainder?

Souls live on in perpetual echoes.

Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas.

We judge other according to results; how else?--not knowing the process by which results are arrived at.

If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.

When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech-one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.

It is pleasant to have a kind word now and then when one is not near enough to have a kind glance or a hearty shake by the hand.

Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.

"Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?

There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.

There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it.

To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

Consequences are unpitying.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

So to live is heaven; to make undying music in the world.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

Say "I love you" to those you love. The eternal silence is long enough to be silent in, and that awaits us all.

... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.

I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.