Quotes by George Eliot
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
He was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
Our deeds are like children that are born to us;they live and act apart from our own will.
There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.
We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness; he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother's knee
But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.
It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness / calling their denial knowledge.
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 lives
Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
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.
Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice; it is a river that flows from the foot of the invisible throne, and flows by the path of obedience
It's never too late to be who you might have been.
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
He was at a starting point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.
But pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.
Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. Anger
