George Eliot quotes - page 21

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs. (George Eliot)
The sense of an entailed disadvantage the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. View quote
George Eliot
Abroad, that large home of ruined reputations. View quote
George Eliot
For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful.... View quote
George Eliot
Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor. View quote
George Eliot
The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey - double and treble the reason for loving as well as working while it is day. View quote
George Eliot
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. View quote
George Eliot
What a wretched lot of old shriveled 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. View quote
George Eliot
The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character. View quote
George Eliot
Im not one o those as can see the cat i the dairy, an wonder what shes come after. View quote
George Eliot
. . . but 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. (George Eliot)
Hatred is like fire it makes even light rubbish deadly. View quote
George Eliot
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.... View quote
George Eliot
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. View quote
George Eliot
Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths. View quote
George Eliot
Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it. View quote
George Eliot
Best friend, my wellspring in the wilderness. View quote
George Eliot
There is no short-cut no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the souls path lies through the thorny wilderness which must still be trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time. View quote
George Eliot
Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power ... but then, so should every other living creature. View quote
George Eliot
It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. View quote
George Eliot
The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not People's lives and fortunes depend on them. (George Eliot)
It's no trifle at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution. View quote
George Eliot
She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. View quote
George Eliot
Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud. View quote
George Eliot
Mighty is the force of motherhood It transforms all things by its vital heat. View quote
George Eliot