Quotes by George Eliot
But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.
'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
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....
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
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're gone.
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
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.
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.
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.
