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Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies, all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression to silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. By George Eliot Love Beethoven Caresses Words Sunsets

Still - if I have read religious history aright - faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible - thank Heaven! - to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour's child to "stop the fits," may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost. By George Eliot Heaven Faith Hope Aright Concords

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it. By George Eliot Maggie Frock Back World Eager

Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. "You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out, and cannot part with it. I have always been finding out my religion since I was a little girl. I used to pray so much - now I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for others, and I have too much already. I only told you, that you might know quite well how my days go at Lowick." "God By George Eliot Dorothea Putting Entreatingly Call Hands

Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid - necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections? By George Eliot Necessarily Prayer Candid Action Private

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres. By George Eliot Acres People Politics Drives Mad

One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one! By George Eliot Spend Learning Happy Young Progress

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe. At present I have to make the new settler Lydgate better known to any one interested in him than he could possibly be even to those who had seen the most of him since his arrival in Middlemarch. By George Eliot Lots Interwoven Web Universe Unraveling

She felt that she was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be the occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying for the last six months. By George Eliot Love Months Felt Beginning Pang

It seems as you'll never know the rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me.''No,' said Silas, 'no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trusten until I die. By George Eliot Master Marner Silas Hinder Dark

How can a man's candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind - impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. By George Eliot Man Candour Lustre Failings Talk

Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should be a little filigree about a womansomething of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at you the better. By George Eliot Woman Style Lays Coquette Filigree

He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly - it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply-informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy. By George Eliot Thinking Longer Free Energy Spontaneous

You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that - if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is - I wouldn't give twopence for him' - here Caleb's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers - 'whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do. By George Eliot Work Wanting Begin Love Edge

He did not shrug his shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses ecclesiastically enshrined. By George Eliot Shoulders Enshrined Shrug Muscular Outlet

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest. By George Eliot Small Thing Notions Forest Fine

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. By George Eliot Friends Easy Love Words Trace

There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work," he said to himself; "the natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot. By George Eliot Change Things Man Work Bearable

People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice. By George Eliot Justice People Talk Evidence Weighed

how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting another who is tied to us. By George Eliot Hard Walk Fear Hurting Tied

Well, well, nobody's perfect, but" - here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words - "what I am thinking of is - what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That's the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here. By George Eliot Garth Perfect Words Husband Pinched

There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room. By George Eliot World Room Chill Air Surrounding

But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. By George Eliot Happiest Maggie Lady Written Women

Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light," "sound," "stars," "music" - words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and "music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past. By George Eliot Language Words Light Music Sound

He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric. By George Eliot Everyday Men Commonest Marketplace Platform

No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. By George Eliot Faith Invisible Goodness Reverenced Unshaken

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader-- if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors-- floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. By George Eliot Brooke Sir Celia James Indifference

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. By George Eliot Mistakes Male Female Mortals Make

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? By George Eliot God Punishment Rejoice Hand Inflicts

The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of their self-satisfaction - as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever. By George Eliot Constant Spontaneous Selfsatisfaction Madness Lever

Great Love has many attributes, and shrines For varied worshippers, but his force divine Shows most its many-named fulness in the man Whose nature multitudinously mixed Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought Resists all easy gladness, all content Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul Flooded with consciousness of good that is Finds life one bounteous answer. By George Eliot Love Shows Resists Save Flooded

She is a good creature - that fine girl - but a little too earnest," he thought. "It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste. By George Eliot Creature Girl Earnest Thought Good

You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favourite of Heaven because I am not a favourite with men. By George Eliot Escape Pain Find Mode Renunciation

Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship? By George Eliot Acquaintanceship Pinched Pilulous Smallness Cobweb

Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers. With By George Eliot Mrs Cadwallader Views Lady Inclined

Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me - my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. By George Eliot Farebrother Fred Duty Strong Give

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimming when once the actions have become a lie. By George Eliot Prevarication White Mind Ambitiously Pure

Gwendolen would not have liked to be an object of disgust to this husband whom she hated: she liked all disgust to be on her side. By George Eliot Disgust Gwendolen Hated Side Object

Stone Court were scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles By George Eliot Raffles Court Stone Impartially Scenting

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy. By George Eliot Form Honour Reverence Divine Beauty

Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. By George Eliot Public Cambridge Drugs College Oxford

The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided - as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard ... Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy. (He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; that seemed to him natural enough.) By George Eliot Anger Squire Man Subsided Rock

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call 'God's birds' because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known? By George Eliot Earth God Loved Grass Hedgerows

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. By George Eliot Hand Destruction Angels Days City

I call it improper pride to let fool's notions hinder you from doing a good action. There's no sort of work," said Caleb, with fervor, putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, "that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow. By George Eliot Action Call Improper Pride Notions

For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. By George Eliot Cravats Multitude Middleaged Men Vocations

Mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire. By George Eliot Mysterious Good Toil Purpose Stood

There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then forever passed her by. By George Eliot Mistake Compensation Woman Feels Chief

Two angels guideThe path of man, both aged and yet young.As angels are, ripening through endless years,On one he leans: some call her Memory,And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet,With deep mysterious accords: the other,Floating above, holds down a lamp with streamsA light divine and searching on the earth,Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew,Reflecting all the rays of that bright lampOur angel Reason holds. We had not walkedBut for Tradition; we walk evermoreTo higher paths by brightening Reason's lamp. By George Eliot Tradition Reason Man Ripening Leans

There, now, father, you won't work in it till it's all easy," said Eppie, "and you and me can mark out the beds, and make holes and plant the roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits when we've got some flowers, for I always think the flowers can see us and know what we're talking about. And I'll have a bit o' rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, because they're so sweet-smelling; but there's no lavender only in the gentlefolks' gardens, I think. By George Eliot Eppie Father Easy Beds Roots

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view. By George Eliot View Narrow Mind Subject Points

Ladislaw lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall of Statues where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that brooding abstraction which made her pose remarkable. She did not really see the streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over the English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads; and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not so clear to her as it had been. But in Dorothea's mind there was a current into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow - the reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the fullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly something better than anger and despondency. By George Eliot Naumann Hall Statues Dorothea Ladislaw

Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant? By George Eliot Slenderer Girl Busy Pleasant Insignificant

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. By George Eliot Diffusive Acts Life Tombs Effect

In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs - perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present. By George Eliot Maggie Books People Happy Tender

Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs. Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity. By George Eliot Tulliver Mrs Husband Desired Thirteen

He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James."No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader. By George Eliot James Cadwallader Sir Mrs Body

I should say she didn't," said Mr. Macey, significantly. "Before I said "sniff", I took care to know as she'd say "snaff", and pretty quick too. I wasn't a-going to open my mouth, like a dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi' nothing to swaller. By George Eliot Macey Significantly Sniff Snaff Care

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality, without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human. By George Eliot People Maxims Life Insight Broad

The clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.["Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," The Westminster Review, 1885.] By George Eliot Practically Evangelical Teaching Cumming Review

The Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers. By George Eliot Feature Practically Press Chapels Preacher

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pierglass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, the candle is the egoism of any party now absent. By George Eliot Scratches Friends Science Fact Candle

On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers. By George Eliot Contrary Indifferent Nature Amiable Vanity

When Maggie became conscious that she was the person he sought, she felt, in spite of all the thought that had gone before, a glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter she was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment seemed a keen vibrating consciousness poised above please or pain. This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the present without those chill, eating thoughts of the past and the future. By George Eliot Maggie Sought Felt Heart Conscious

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. By George Eliot Jews Land Tragedies Years Heroes

He had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him. By George Eliot Heroes Past Ideal World Dead

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair. By George Eliot Nature Ravages Trees Past Hills

A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation. By George Eliot Making Timber Pretty Building Bricks

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being. By George Eliot Life Change Measured Rapidity Succession

But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy, and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. By George Eliot Happiness Glad Moment Love Vision

Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the domain of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish. By George Eliot Love Grief Anguish Frightened Intervals

There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects. By George Eliot Eyes Observations Objects Keenness Shedding

My dear Mrs Casaubon," said Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardour, "character 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.""Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea. By George Eliot Casaubon Farebrother Mrs Smiling Ardour

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm caressingly. Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke, but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions? By George Eliot Celia Dorothea Paper Caressingly Bent

It is seldom a medical man has true religious viewsthere is too much pride of intellect. By George Eliot Intellect Seldom Medical Man True

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines. By George Eliot Heaven Wrong Shameful Greatest Power

He, like others, happened to be looking at her, and their eyes met - to her intense vexation, for it seemed to her that by looking at him she had betrayed the reference of her thoughts, and she felt herself blushing. By George Eliot Happened Met Vexation Thoughts Blushing

As leopard feels at home with leopard. By George Eliot Leopard Feels Home

She seated herself on a dark ottoman with the brown books behind her, looking in her plain dress of some thin woollen-white material, without a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring, as if she were under a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin. Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she exaggerated a past solace. By George Eliot Material Weddingring Women Distance Profile

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for. By George Eliot Dispositions Side Curious Patches Hardness

If I have read religious history aright, faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords; and it is possible, thank heaven! to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. By George Eliot Faith Hope Aright Concords Heaven

He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to go away without pause. It was all one flash to Dorothea - his last words - his distant bow to her as he reached the door - the sense that he was no longer there. She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were hurrying upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train behind it - joy in the impression that it was really herself whom Will loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from. They were parted all the same, but - Dorothea drew a deep breath and felt her strength return - she could think of him unrestrainedly. At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, By George Eliot Pause Dorothea Movement Anger Impelled

A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel. By George Eliot Camel Peasant Believing Traditional Superstition

There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own liveswhen the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. By George Eliot World Mankind Reading Enter War

Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration: - reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspirations Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space. By George Eliot Lucifer Narration Reports Orbs Phosphorescence

Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world - all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation ... the vastness of St. Peter's the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. By George Eliot Ruins Basilicas Palaces Colossi Set

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign amiability, or not feigning it, to show all the repulsiveness of discontent. By George Eliot Plainness Beauty Amiability Discontent Peculiar

Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action; breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease. By George Eliot Live Strong Action Breathe Ease

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. By George Eliot Age Gains Advancing Good Young

There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us. By George Eliot Sunlight Ashamed Sins Follies Blessed

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion. By George Eliot Speech Barren Nest Silence Necessarily

Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer's orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of actionlike the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea and sky he invokes and the deity he defies. By George Eliot Men Visible Planets History Invisible

Tom had never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, when once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers were not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those of the Rev. Mr Stelling; for Tom could predict with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behind him, he could throw a stone right into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement. But Mr Stelling took no note of those things: he only observed that Tom's faculties failed him before the abstractions hideously symbolized to him in the pages of the Eton Grammar, and that he was in a state bordering on idiocy with regard to the demonstration that two given triangles must be equal - though he could discern with great promptitude and certainty the fact that they were equal. By George Eliot Tom Stelling Setter Distinction Deficient

At home, at school, among acquaintances, she had been used to have her conscious superiority admitted; and she had moved in a society where everything, from low arithmetic to high art, is of the amateur kind politely supposed to fall short of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do more than they like - otherwise they would probably give forth abler writings and show themselves more commanding artists than any the world is at present obliged to put up with. By George Eliot Obliged Home School Acquaintances Admitted

It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point. By George Eliot Beam Point True Man Intellectual

He bore the same sort of resemblance to his mother that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the expression heartier. If By George Eliot Face Generous Brighter Heartier Bore

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face. By George Eliot Life Face Began Waking Loving

But womanly, I hope, said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs. Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination. By George Eliot Garth Mrs Casaubon Womanly Hope

After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope. By George Eliot Ideas Feeling Widening Influence Remains

It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own. By George Eliot Retreat Favourite Stratagem Passions Sham

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") By George Eliot Strange Presence Cities Plains Ruins

I don't mean your resentment toward them," said Philip ... "I mean your extending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense and goodness to share their narrow prejudices. She has never entered into the family quarrels.""What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does; we ask whom she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you, to think of marrying old Tulliver's daughter. By George Eliot Philip Resentment Girl Prejudices Tulliver

The calendar hath not an evil dayFor souls made one by love, and even deathWere sweetness, if it came like rolling wavesWhile they two clasped each other, and foresawNo life apart. By George Eliot Love Sweetness Calendar Hath Evil

When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering; the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the waterdrops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst. By George Eliot Heaviness Black Trial Suffering Low

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them. By George Eliot Humphrey Sermons End Married Made

But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity, - strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others, - prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth. By George Eliot Fragmentary Severity Strength Conscious Purpose

It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never. By George Eliot Make Matter Anytime Point Life

Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf. By George Eliot Poyser Leg Calf Reason Ashamed

That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. By George Eliot Lies Frequency Mankind Element Tragedy

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [ ... ] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness - in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture. By George Eliot People Educated Called Making Ham

Dark the Night, with breath all flowers,And tender broken voice that fillsWith ravishment the listening hours,Whisperings, wooings,Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooingsIn low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills!Dark the nightYet is she bright,For in her dark she brings the mystic star,Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love,From some unknown afar. By George Eliot Dark Night Voice Hourswhisperings Wooingsliquid

What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown. By George Eliot Crown Man Virtue Sunk Possibility

There are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner. By George Eliot Sneeze Manner Conditions Majestic Person

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. By George Eliot Invisible Life Nay Faith Past

Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence. By George Eliot Presence Join Choir Invisible Immortal

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. By George Eliot Family Likeness Deep Sadness Nature

There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy. By George Eliot Wrath Room Philosophy Answers Turning

He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful doubt as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. These were heavy impressions to struggle against, and brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key to all Mythologies. For By George Eliot Brasenose Archdeacon Carp Casaubon Desk

Perhaps nothing ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right. By George Eliot Late Lesson World Feel Life

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. By George Eliot Hardest Years Fifty Seventy Things

I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much ... I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in's work. The very grindstone 'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it. By George Eliot Work Strike Clock Abide Men

Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring: when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide. By George Eliot Enduring Affection Springtide Love Kinds

But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's plan in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. By George Eliot Rectory God Sort Hatred World

We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions - how much more by hearing in hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness! By George Eliot Confessions Observer Morbid Numbness Angered

It is something cruelly incomprehensible to youthful natures, this sombre sameness in middle-aged and elderly people, whose life has resulted in disappointment and discontent, to whose faces a smile becomes so strange that the sad lines all about the lips and brow seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away again for want of a welcome. "Why will they not kindle up and be glad sometimes?" thinks young elasticity. "It would be so easy if they only liked to do it." And these leaden clouds that never part are apt to create impatience even in the filial affection that streams forth in nothing but tenderness and pity in the time of more obvious affliction. By George Eliot Natures People Discontent Cruelly Incomprehensible

I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the neighbors outside our walls. I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands. By George Eliot False Walls Village Dirt Coarse

There's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth. By George Eliot Garden Parish Endless Waste Victuals

If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking. By George Eliot Censors Words People Weigh Condemnation

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841] By George Eliot Day True Autumn Earth Oct

A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment. By George Eliot Give Surprises Sentiment Picture Human

Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and wagging his tail. She leaned her back against the window-frame, and laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances. By George Eliot Dorothea Monk Anxiously Pray Window

A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts. By George Eliot Accepts Woman Lot Made Love

Things look dim to old folks: they'd need have some young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be. By George Eliot Things Folks Dim Young Eyes

what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an 'appointment') which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge? By George Eliot Lucrative Man Appointment Gentlemanly Knowledge

when you are among the fields and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to simple natural pleasures. By George Eliot Hedgerows Pleasures Fields Impossible Maintain

the devil will be having his finger in what we call our duties as well as our sins. Mayhap By George Eliot Sins Mayhap Devil Finger Call

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger. By George Eliot Fearless Danger Apt Fear Companions

Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. By George Eliot Brooke Miss Religion Striking Large

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. By George Eliot Ability Quotations Spite Practical Experience

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling. By George Eliot Phrases Beliefs Caricatured Hireling Mental

Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. By George Eliot Hands Poverty Toiler Hope Body

Brothers are so unpleasant. By George Eliot Brothers Unpleasant

The disappointments of life can never, any more than its pleasures, be estimated singly; and the healthiest and most agreeable of men is exposed to that coincidence of various vexations, each heightening the effect of the other, which may produce in him something corresponding to the spontaneous and externally unaccountable moodiness of the morbid and disagreeable. By George Eliot Pleasures Singly Vexations Disagreeable Disappointments

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to others? By George Eliot Live Make Life Difficult

And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind her, and to whom she is grateful. By George Eliot Life Grateful Odious Things Girl

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man. By George Eliot Man Mother Yearning Feels Presence

Perhaps we don't always discriminate between sense and nonsense. By George Eliot Nonsense Discriminate Sense

If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again. By George Eliot Herds Gaze Beseeching Journeying Princess

No man can be wise on an empty stomach. By George Eliot Stomach Man Wise Empty

There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer. By George Eliot Joy Sufferer Robberies Leave Man

Maggie in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once ornamental and useful. By George Eliot Maggie Form Back Promise Niece

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. By George Eliot Music Mortal Plenty

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound. By George Eliot Live Sound Half Truth Amidst

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion. By George Eliot Occasion Feeling General Security

Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs. By George Eliot Vague Cobwebs Memories Hang Mind

The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach. By George Eliot Reach Stars Golden Fruit Tree

As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given to us to guide our own steps. We are like the foot soldiers, who hear nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle they are in, but hear plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey. By George Eliot Feet Steps Lay Light Guide

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off. By George Eliot Surely World Sorrow True Blessedness

The religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage. By George Eliot Savage Religion Personal Fear Remains

The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. By George Eliot Slow Overrun Catch Tail Men

There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots. By George Eliot Folks Boots Stand Heads Fault

The promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach, - impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed. By George Eliot Eden Void Side Promises Sweet

I don't mind [being ugly], do you? By George Eliot Mind Ugly

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic. By George Eliot Inference Mind Desire Problematic Dull

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly By George Eliot Men Live Habit Calmly Beneficent

It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly - it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under his anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy. Mr. By George Eliot Men Live Calmly Thought Trial

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. By George Eliot Home Quote Call Feelings Comfort

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses. By George Eliot Life Idea Mere Duty Recognition

Described by Harold Bloom as "the beginning of the end of the traditional novel of social morality" (xii), George Eliot's Middlemarch is nonetheless replete with a kind of authorial intervention that modern readers might find tiresome. Readers today are accustomed to the contemporary fictional maxim of "show, don't tell" but Eliot had different aesthetic ideas, for she always tells us right away who we are dealing with. At the beginning of Middlemarch, the character of one of its protagonists, Dorothea Brooke, is laid out. Eliot writes, By George Eliot George Eliot Harold Bloom Middlemarch

My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake. By George Eliot Satan Colic Whoopingcough Hell Deity

She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock, because it has the future in it as well as the present. Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her. For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. By George Eliot Morning Tears Night Misery Shock

Because, dear, trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies; we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our fellow men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen to you; and I desire for you, that while you are young you should seek for the strength from your Heavenly Father, that you may have a support which will not fail you in the evil day. By George Eliot Trouble God Dear Life Sorrowing

What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I'm going to marry? The most unpleasant thing in the world. I should quarrel with him; I should be jealous of him; our menage would be conducted in a very ill-bred manner. A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life. ("The Lifted Veil") By George Eliot Marry Veil Wisdom Love Man

Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito, having observed that a nom de plume secures all the advantages without the disagreeables of reputation. By George Eliot Stories Incognito Reputation Success Resolute

Marriage 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. By George Eliot Marriage Unlike Brings Awful Nearness

Those bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless. By George Eliot Childhood Bitter Summer Strange Weeks

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge ... wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it. By George Eliot Hope Belief Things Illimitable Sweet

It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying our space wider than it is. By George Eliot Higher Lower Nature Habit Understand

What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch", as Mary called hereself? It was certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confinde in their want of beauty) By George Eliot Mary Men Brown Patch Hereself

Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humour?' said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. 'The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.''With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellow pull you ... By George Eliot Nonsense Till Humour Overrate Necessity

A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow. By George Eliot Vow Break Man East Breaking

The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original had resulted from these measures; and By George Eliot Attitudes Receptivity Sincerely Wine Simply

i am always bored." (gwendolen harleth) By George Eliot Bored Gwendolen Harleth

Excuse me there. If you go upon arguments, they are never wanting, when a man has no constancy of mind. My father never changed, and he preached plain moral sermons without arguments, and was a good man - few better. When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery-book. That's my opinion, and I think anybody's stomach will bear me out. By George Eliot Arguments Good Excuse Man Wanting

He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful. By George Eliot Miss Brooke Distrustful Thought Probable

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 forever 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. By George Eliot Noiseless Existence Pain Vibrations Make

I know no speck so troublesome as self. And who, if Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents - his suspicions that he was not any longer adored without criticism - could have denied that they were founded on good reasons? On the contrary, there was a strong reason to be added, which he had not taken explicitly into account - namely that he was not unmixedly adorable. He suspected this, however, as he suspected other things, without confessing it, and like the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have been to have a companion who would never find out. By George Eliot Speck Troublesome Casaubon Suspected Discontents

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty. By George Eliot Duty Children Symbol Eternal Marriage

She took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks. By George Eliot Heaven Men Troublesome Turkeycocks Husband

Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead. By George Eliot Thought Woe Godhead Joys Blackest

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care. By George Eliot Selfsatisfaction Care Strong Selflove Selfdiscontent

There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? By George Eliot Despair Love Hour Births Gladness

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. By George Eliot Books Read Offendene Glad Write

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child. By George Eliot Pursuits Interesting Homemaking Scolds Niece

All these crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner companion, or to see your favourite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities. By George Eliot Questions Changed Noonday Crushing Remained

I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is. By George Eliot Engaged People Begin Married Long

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; theyknow all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. By George Eliot Dead Wounded Theyknow Penitence Empty

Dear Friends all, A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen. People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious or affectionate. By George Eliot Year Friends Christmas Dear Amen

Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. By George Eliot Complexion Muscles Glance Touch Observing

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. By George Eliot Joshua Sir Portrait Change Moment

Religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions By George Eliot Miss Brooke Celia Religious Feeling

I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone. By George Eliot Testament Moses Read Fruits Carried

Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. By George Eliot Nature Openness Prophecies Deep Cunning

When uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts: the same words, the same scenes are revolved over and over again, the same mood accompanies them - the end of the year finds them as much what they were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a recurrent series of movements. By George Eliot Minds Confined Experience Misfortune Thoughts

It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experiencehas brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feelingwithin us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength.We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicianscan wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas. By George Eliot Pain Growth Return Ignoble Feel

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed 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. By George Eliot Common Chambers Dressed Notions Bring

Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower. By George Eliot Blessed Influence True Loving Human

But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the out-door world, for he meant to light up the home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-door colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food: he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred,and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homelessfell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance, where the human faces had no sunshine in them,but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learnt the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time, with unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart. By George Eliot Christmas Meant Human Faces Warm

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her ... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me. By George Eliot Love Poor Fellow You Aware

As the child's mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold, narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full consciousness. By George Eliot Growing Mind Knowledge Memory Unfolded

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others. By George Eliot Pride Bad Thing Urges Hide

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other. By George Eliot Learnin Birch Father Paid Bit

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse. By George Eliot Spanish Theresas Ago Kind Woman

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal. By George Eliot Case Ideal Common Man Suddenly

You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback. By George Eliot Easy Horseback Youngsters Nowadays Begin

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. By George Eliot Helpful Wisdom Draught Simple Human

If you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. By George Eliot Doctor Speak Devil Fair Save

We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our little hurts will be made much of - to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. By George Eliot Children Family Learn Caressing Large

Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. By George Eliot Love Summers Glance Morning Simple

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts - not to hurt others. By George Eliot Mortals Men Women Devour Dinnertime

That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger - not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose. By George Eliot Great Danger Repose Quiet Mutual

Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the elder sister. He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it. By George Eliot Sister Celia Sir James Miss

But that Herschel, for example, who "broke the barriers of the heavens" - did he not once play a provincial church-organ, and give music-lessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining Ones had to walk on the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait and his garments than of anything which was to give him a title to everlasting fame: each of them had his little local personal history sprinkled with small temptations and sordid cares, which made the retarding friction of his course towards final companionship with the immortals. By George Eliot Herschel Broke Heavens Churchorgan Pianists

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for lifeto strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? By George Eliot Souls Labor Sorrow Pain Parting

more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or By George Eliot Needful Heart Swell Loving Admiration

The limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognisable deed. By George Eliot Verse Limits Variation Wider Imagine

The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling "business. By George Eliot Caleb Garth Mother Children Father

goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the slightest chance - on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we are set free from the grinding hurry of the week, and take the little three-year old on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin; in moments of trouble, when death visits our roof or illness makes us dependent on the tending hand of a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged mother, of the days when we stood at her knee with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving letters from school. By George Eliot Hand Knee Sunday Goodness Chance

Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words. By George Eliot Poor Speak Dog Dogs Strange

Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's By George Eliot Aye Thee Bible Thy Allays

What can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye for beauty, and makes sweet-scented ease an oppression? By George Eliot Beauty Oppression Hunger Heart Sickens

The only conscience we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims. That's my text - which side is injured? I support the man who supports their claims, not the virtuous upholder of the wrong. By George Eliot Wisdom Claims Class Conscience Trust

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. By George Eliot Characters Continually Creating Collisions Nodes

you, and have no little girls' clothes to mend." "Yes," said Maggie. "It is with me as I used to think it would be with the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and forward in that narrow space that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad habit of being unhappy." "But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you lose that bad habit," said Lucy, sticking the black butterfly absently in her own collar, while her eyes met Maggie's affectionately. "You dear, tiny thing," said Maggie, in one of her bursts of loving admiration, "you enjoy other people's happiness so much, I believe you would do without any of your own. I wish I were like you." "I've never been tried in that way," said Lucy. "I've always By George Eliot Maggie Habit Lucy Mend Girls

Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the consequences of their recklessness. By George Eliot Men Love Recklessness Outlive Consequences

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternative vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us. By George Eliot Strange Vision Infatuations Heights Behold

The usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion. By George Eliot Christians Stupid Principles Christ Jews

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking By George Eliot Agreement Disputation Liking Delightful Friendships

I have to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don't blame them, or think I am better than they; their circumstances are different. I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labour and common burden of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the push and the scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the push and the scramble in the long-run. But I care for the people who live now and will not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, I prefer going shares with the unlucky. By George Eliot Men Determine Withdraw Push Choose

Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls. By George Eliot Veracity Paradise Walls Plant Seeds

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. By George Eliot Oppressive Smoke Past Sensations Memories

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness! By George Eliot Friend Wilderness Wellspring

The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula. By George Eliot Growth Faculty Bringing Strength Return

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans - which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi. By George Eliot Zambesi Vagrancy Hedgerows Tropics Banyans

It might seem singular that Nancy - with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience - should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge - singular, if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system. By George Eliot Nancy Singular Beliefs System Traditions

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men ... it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid ... knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversations of his elders he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life. By George Eliot Read Pony Hunting Men Riding

The best part of a woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses, too, that were let fall, ready to soothe the wearied feet. By George Eliot Worship Rejected Tresses Fall Ready

To the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished. By George Eliot Diminished Receptive Soul River Life

Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it ... There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. By George Eliot God Beauty Great Human Earth

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. By George Eliot Making Society Happy Made Preposterous

Though I am not endowed with an ear to seize those earthly harmonies, which to some devout souls have seemed, as it were, the broken echoes of the heavenly choirI apprehend that there is a law in music, disobedience whereunto would bring us in our singing to the level of shrieking maniacs or howling beasts. By George Eliot Harmonies Music Disobedience Beasts Endowed

that is Nature's way: she will allow a gentleman of splendid physiognomy and poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune, and not give him the slightest hint of it; and takes care that some narrow-browed fellow, trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot-house, shall be as true to his intervals as a bird. By George Eliot Nature Tune Fellow Trolling Pothouse

That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow. By George Eliot Greeting Sorrow Farewell Kiss Resembles

There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the fire of enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape. By George Eliot Shape Sort Human Paste Fire

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. By George Eliot Childhood Forebodings Sorrow Soothed Memories

In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fiber of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. By George Eliot Kindness Issues Man Childhood Caresses

Whatever else she might be, she was not disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling. She was an angel beguiled. It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly and ingenuously. By George Eliot Disagreeable Satirical Feeling Coldly Clever

It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside them forevermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time. By George Eliot Story Tempter Blood Day Forevermore

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music. By George Eliot Feeling Grief Music Extremes Fear

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting: everybody was there, and what else was there to be done? Though, for his own part, he did not care a button for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him, and had been watching him for some time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress. But Godfrey thrust her away without looking at her, and left the room, followed humbly by the unresenting Snuff - perhaps because she saw no other career open to her. By George Eliot Time Cockfighting Snuff Evening Pass

The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself. By George Eliot Feelings Sense Mutual Love Excludes

Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop. Mr. By George Eliot Small Plotting Contrivance End Dramatist

It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons. By George Eliot Background Maternity World Boys Reading

Each remembered thing in the room was disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering gaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate marriage - of Will Ladislaw's grandmother. Dorothea could fancy that it was alive now - the delicate woman's face which yet had a headstrong look, a peculiarity difficult to interpret. Was it only her friends who thought her marriage unfortunate? or did she herself find it out to be a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the merciful silence of the night? What breadths of experience Dorothea seemed to have passed over since she first looked at this miniature! She felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her and could see how she was looking at it. Here was a woman who had known some difficulty about marriage. By George Eliot Julia Casaubon Ladislaw Marriage Disenchanted

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, 'You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I daresay you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine. By George Eliot Cadwallader Privately Mrs Dear House

He was unique to her among men because he's impressed her as being not her admirer her superior. In some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience as one woman who's nature is an object of reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man. By George Eliot Superior Unique Men Impressed Admirer

But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. By George Eliot Gratify Hope Desire Love Strive

When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope. By George Eliot Hope Soul Liberated Wretched Giant

It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence. By George Eliot Fact Fresh Vision Representation Experience

A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones. By George Eliot Stones Man Falling Dark Waters

It was a still afternoon - the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss; an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. By George Eliot Afternoon Boughs Moss Veil Encloses

[His] past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still keep their hold in the consciousness. By George Eliot Past Risen Quality Pleasures Lost

Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another. By George Eliot Conceit Vanities Noses Varies Correspondence

As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe. By George Eliot Eyes Scholar Religions Catastrophe Stone

It is a curious fact that the more sophisticated we become the simpler grows our speech. By George Eliot Speech Curious Fact Sophisticated Simpler

It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself ... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound. By George Eliot Woman Face Doesna Flowers Flower

Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but imputed to man they may both be true." - Rasselas. By George Eliot Inconsistencies Imlac Rasselas Answered True

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. By George Eliot Pity Stupid People Fellowmortals Noses

You must not judge of Celia's feeling from mine. I think she likes these small pets. She had a tiny terrier once, which she was very fond of. It made me unhappy, because I was afraid of treading on it. I am rather short-sighted. By George Eliot Celia Mine Judge Feeling Pets

They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them. By George Eliot Wilderness Entered Thorny Golden Gates

We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. By George Eliot Face Love Earth Yearnings Woman

You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only es By George Eliot Certainty Hope Immortal Delicious Propitious

Then I shall tell you. It is because you are to me the chief woman in the world - the throned lady whose colours I carry between my heart and my armour. By George Eliot World Armour Chief Woman Throned

We read, indeed, that the walls of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets,39 but we nowhere hear that those trumpets were hoarse and feeble. Doubtless they were trumpets that gave forth clear ringing tones, and sent a mighty vibration through brick and mortar. But the oratory of the Rev. Amos resembled rather a Belgian railway-horn, which shows praiseworthy intentions inadequately fulfilled. By George Eliot Jericho Read Feeble Trumpets Walls

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide. By George Eliot Maggie Insight Love Foreboding Lorton

As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love - when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them. By George Eliot Memory Selflove Approached Marshy Frail

There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that followsin the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its painin the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routineit is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction. By George Eliot Trouble Stimulus Strength Time Sustaining

The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery. By George Eliot Misery Happiness Escape Worst

When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window. By George Eliot Tools Window Workman Make Door

People who seem to enjoy their ill-temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. By George Eliot People Enjoy Illtemper Keeping Fine

Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague, uneasy longings sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love. By George Eliot Men Symptoms Taking Vague Uneasy

May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. By George Eliot Enkindle Beget Heaven Agony Ardor

Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary. By George Eliot Primary Lds Church Sunday Children

We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom ... By George Eliot America Discovered Sailor Wrecked Kingdom

We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours. By George Eliot Sow Justice Fruit Reap Nature

It is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general preference for the best style of thing. By George Eliot Friends Universe Issues Costume Thing

Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living. By George Eliot Explain Preference Woman Touch Hell

Perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering, than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morningwhen there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. By George Eliot Warmth Cheering Time Summer Day

He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself ... By George Eliot Nature Impressible Lived Great Deal

Was something very new and strange in his life that these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him. By George Eliot Strange Life Words Trust Woman

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures. By George Eliot Years Lives Tender Storing Idea

Deronda ... gave himself up to that strongest effect of chanted liturgies which is independent of detailed verbal meaning ... The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us; or else a self-oblivious lifting up of gladness, a Gloria in excelsis that such Good exists; both the yearning and the exultation gathering their utmost force from the sense of communion in a form which has expressed them both, for long generations of struggling fellow-men. By George Eliot Deronda Good Yearning Gloria Gave

Young love-makingthat gossamer web! Even the points it clings tothe things whence its subtle interlacings are swungare scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. By George Eliot Young Lovemakingthat Gossamer Web Perceptible

But oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance. By George Eliot Command Knowledge Ignorance Oppositions Illimitable

In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields. By George Eliot Age Fruit Sprinkled Winepress Checkered

It is time the clergy are told that thinking men, after a close examination of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development and, therefore, positively noxious. By George Eliot Men Doctrine Pronounce Positively Noxious

And yet the hope of this paradise had not been enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it forever. Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into the mud and slime, in which it was useless to struggle. He had made his ties for himself which robbed him of all wholesome motive and were a constant exasperation. By George Eliot Forever Hope Paradise Save Shut

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity. By George Eliot Doubtless Years Pity Great Anguish

When a man is happy enough to win the affections of a sweet girl, who can soothe his cares with crochet, and respond to all his most cherished ideas with beaded urn-rugs and chair-covers in German wool, he has, at least, a guarantee of domestic comfort, whatever trials may await him out of doors. What a resource it is under fatigue and irritation to have your drawing-room well supplied with small mats, which would always be ready if you ever wanted to set anything on them ! And what styptic for a bleeding heart can equal copious squares of crochet, which are useful for slipping down the moment you touch them ? How our fathers managed without crochet is the wonder; but I believe some small and feeble substitute existed in their time under the name of 'tatting'. By George Eliot German Crochet Girl Wool Comfort

Just a month from this day, on the twentieth of September, 1850, I shall be sitting in this chair, in this study, at ten o' clock at night, longing to die, weary of incessant insight and foresight, without delusions and without hope. By George Eliot September Day Chair Study Clock

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. By George Eliot Eve Eden Adam Marriage Beginning

I told you from the beginning - as soon as I could - I told you I was afraid of myself." There was a piteous pleading in the low murmur in which Deronda turned his ear only. Her face afflicted him too much. "I felt a hatred in me that was always working like an evil spirit - contriving things. Everything I could do to free myself came into my mind; and it got worse - all things got worse. That is why I asked you to come to me in town. I thought then I would tell you the worst about myself. I tried. But I could not tell everything. By George Eliot Told Beginning Afraid Worse Deronda

She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving - perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining. By George Eliot Road Curtains View Entrancegates Opened

She handled it (her trade) with all the grace that belongs to mastery. By George Eliot Trade Mastery Handled Grace Belongs

The red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not By George Eliot Christmas Retina Red Drapery Hung

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive. By George Eliot Motive Makes Life Dreary

I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right thingsit's feelings. It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'maticsa man may be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe; but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution, and love something else better than his own ease. By George Eliot Notions Clear Pretty Young Religion

The impulse to confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and in our moments of spiritual need, the man to whom we have no tie but our common nature, seems nearer to us than mother, brother, or friend. Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, and those who sit with us at the same hearth, are often the farthest off from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good. By George Eliot Fresh Brother Heart Nature Mother

Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings; but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,the ties that have made others dependent on us,and would cut them in two. By George Eliot Difficult Life Ties Feelings Made

The betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. 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. On By George Eliot Home Betrothed Bride Future Made

Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. By George Eliot Remains Verse Indefiniteness Limits Variation

I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world!""Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better.""Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order. By George Eliot Nonsense Impossible Child Mary World

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. By George Eliot Egyptian Mirror Past Single Drop

It is hard to believe long together that anything is "worth while," unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind. By George Eliot Precious Worth Mind Hard Long

That was the way with Casaubon's hard intellectual labours. Their most characteristic result was not the 'Key to all Mythologies', but a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited - a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage - a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds By George Eliot Casaubon Labours Intellectual Hard Key

Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles. By George Eliot Selfevident Conceive Day Question Hypothesis

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates. By George Eliot Duty Gates Trick Behaving Unexpectedly

Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts, Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence; Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line, May languish with the scurvy. By George Eliot Sir Breathing Line Draw Hopes

I don't remember ever being see-saw, when I'd made my mind up that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanshipyou never see th' end o' the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow creatures worse off instead o' better. By George Eliot Seesaw Remember Made Mind Wrong

The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain The grandest death, to die in vainfor love Greater than sways the forces of the world! By George Eliot Christ Roman Greater Crucified Spears

Was never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain. By George Eliot Vain Gain Love True Loved

The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity. By George Eliot Fact Simplicity Purifying Influence Public

It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner. By George Eliot Corner Filling Pocket Money Hole

In a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven. By George Eliot Birdnotes Heaven Paradise Sweet Laughs

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable - when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us - that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory. By George Eliot Irrevocable Strength Moment Resolution Fatal

I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone. By George Eliot Time Science Great Deal Leads

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles ... but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you. By George Eliot Beauty Men Causing Styles Make

Women know no perfect love:Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;Man clings because the being whom he lovesIs weak and needs him. By George Eliot Strong Loving Man Women Love

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on. By George Eliot Pain Instinctive Rebellion Children Demand

Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses. By George Eliot Parentheses Put Drop Magnifyingglass Semicolons

the philanthropic banker his brother-in-law, who predominated so much in the town that some called him a Methodist, others a hypocrite, according to the resources of their vocabulary; By George Eliot Methodist Hypocrite Vocabulary Philanthropic Banker

It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of itif we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of the Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructable force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathythe one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love. By George Eliot Human Unknown Blame Suffering Loneliness

The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it oftensubsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. By George Eliot Event Conviction Alarm Habit Reason

Imagination is often truer than fact," said Gwendolen, decisively, though she could no more have explained these glib words than if they had been Coptic or Etruscan. "I shall be so glad to learn all about Tasso - and his madness especially. I suppose poets are always a little mad." "To be sure - 'the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling'; and somebody says of Marlowe - 'For that fine madness still he did maintain, Which always should possess the poet's brain.'" "But it was not always found out, was it?" said Gwendolen innocently. "I suppose some of them rolled their eyes in private. Mad people are often very cunning. By George Eliot Etruscan Coptic Decisively Gwendolen Imagination

There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate. By George Eliot Recriminate Heroism Circles Hell Fellowsinners

I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about. By George Eliot Flowers Thinking

There is so much to read and the days are so short! I get more hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger. By George Eliot Short Read Hunger Days Day

His soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that is should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers threadlike in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. By George Eliot Enthusiastic Delight Hatched Thinking Flying

Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and in a few days began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemed to think the case worth a great deal of attention. He not only used his stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice at that time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. To Mr. Casaubon's questions about himself, he replied that the source of the illness was the common error of intellectual men - a too eager and monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate work, and to seek variety of relaxation. By George Eliot Casaubon Condition Attack Equal Severity

Humphrey finds everybody charming I never can get him to abuse Casaubon. He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by abusing everybody myself. By George Eliot Casaubon Humphrey Finds Charming Abuse

The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path. By George Eliot Nature Life Theoretic Disposition Ardent

I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight - that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin. By George Eliot Marriage Preliminary Reveal Suppose Courtship

Still - it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing. By George Eliot Wooing Fairly Called Woman Woo

Men can do nothing without the make-believe of abeginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to startwith a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars'unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that timeis at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always beenunderstood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appearsthat her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science,too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit intobillions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets offin medias res. No retrospect will take us to the truebeginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it isbut a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our storysets out. By George Eliot Nought Men Abeginning Makebelieve Unit

Mary was fond of her own thoughts, and could amuse herself well sitting in twilight with her hands in her lap; for, having early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part. By George Eliot Mary Thoughts Lap Satisfaction Fact

Eulogy - especially from a young lass who, as he informed his mother that evening, had such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow as they made him feel nohow. By George Eliot Eulogy Evening Eyes Nohow Young

Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. By George Eliot Monster Mathematician Philosopher Man Mad

He once called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains. By George Eliot Explanation Brains Basil Plant Called

The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate, because it gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent and unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him by the simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement on his own part of ignorant puffing. But By George Eliot Lydgate Desire Puffing Trash Talked

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. By George Eliot Sand Golden Moments Stream Life

In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die. By George Eliot Childish Young Ignorant Chance Die

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree. By George Eliot People Working Tree Cuts Sadly

The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. By George Eliot Change Things Nature Life

I thirsted for the unknown: the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it: I am content. By George Eliot Unknown Thirsted Thirst God Content

O the anguish of that thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given us to know! By George Eliot God Pleadings Anguish Thought Atone

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. By George Eliot Live Presence Generosity Rectitude Stars

I've always mistrusted that sort o' learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. By George Eliot Learning Business Mistrusted Sort Leaves

If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. By George Eliot Thinking Batter Dinner Make Pudding

We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend. By George Eliot Useless Spend Deal Things Money

I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't. By George Eliot Text God Grace Real Began

In the days when the spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhousesand even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oakthere might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palled undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. By George Eliot Spinning Wheels Ladies Clothed Lace

Leisure is gone,gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. By George Eliot Leisure Packhorses Wagons Peddlers Afternoons

They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste." Evidently By George Eliot Reasons Question Taste Evidently Wanting

Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty,how could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it. By George Eliot Dorothea Life Retained Eagerness Truths

I've had my say out, and I shall be the' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living, if you're to be corked up forever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. By George Eliot Easier Life Living Forever Sly

Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. By George Eliot Film Fruit Soul Ripened Fuller

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. By George Eliot Wretched Lot Shrivelled Creatures Mind

He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention. By George Eliot Held Remorse Depth Doctrinally Convinced

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw. By George Eliot Demerit Impartiality Abstract Merit

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures. By George Eliot Pleasures Idea Fellowcountrymen Miseries

Under the vague dullness of the gray hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object and finds it in the privation of an untried good. By George Eliot Hours Dissatisfaction Good Vague Dullness

I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dullness of the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction By George Eliot Dissatisfaction Joyous Hours Object Good

Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy. By George Eliot Happiness Bring Joy Blessings Love

The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world. By George Eliot World Progress Save Modified Action

There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water. By George Eliot Folks Water Hold Sieve Pump

The best fire doesna flare up the soonest. By George Eliot Soonest Fire Doesna Flare

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. By George Eliot Reverence Soul Desolate Long Human

Her own questions about her mother could not have been parried, as she grew up, without the complete shrouding of the past which would have made a painful barrier between their minds. By George Eliot Parried Minds Questions Mother Grew

I hold it a blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning. By George Eliot Great Authority Beginning Hold Blasphemy

Anger seek it prey, Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Like not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will. By George Eliot Love Anger Prey Claw Hungry

I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.' 'I think the goodness should come before he expects that. By George Eliot Dearly Man Good Woman Love

In my opinion, legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require knowledge of another kind. People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on any particular subject, unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is no better than an old woman at a post-mortem examination. By George Eliot Opinion Legal Kind Training Makes