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b2250ad
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A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the prosce..
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George Eliot |
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501ba1b
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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 fem..
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George Eliot |
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f881549
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So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread.
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George Eliot |
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9ff8866
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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."
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husbands
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George Eliot |
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5ceebfa
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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 parenthesis," said Mrs. Cadwallader."
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George Eliot |
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ca3ab13
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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?
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perspective
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George Eliot |
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2510ba4
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He loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own."
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dominion
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George Eliot |
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af79978
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In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.
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pain
sovereignty-of-god
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George Eliot |
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8c5a592
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Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which have no great name on earth. 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 h..
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George Eliot |
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afbb639
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College mostly makes people like bladders-- just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.
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education
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George Eliot |
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eed4e99
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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 am..
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George Eliot |
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3c277ee
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many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to 'find their feet' among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people t..
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George Eliot |
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194a987
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For getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest.
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George Eliot |
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f433e08
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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 ..
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temptation
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George Eliot |
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3b9be1b
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he was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess.
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George Eliot |
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6a1b92e
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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.
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George Eliot |
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790437f
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there are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them.
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George Eliot |
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c85e99a
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Anxiety is good for nothing if we can't turn it into a defense.
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george eliot |
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03824ae
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Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into..
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George Eliot |
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0370e40
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Miss Lucy's called the bell o' St. Ogg's, they say: that's a cur'ous word,' observed Mr. Pullet, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight.
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George Eliot |
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ddc9dd8
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Author describes one character's optimism as, that quiet well-being which perhaps you and I have felt on a sunny afternoon when, in our brightest youth and health, life has opened a new vista for us, and long to-morrows of activity have stretched before us like a lovely plain which there was no need for hurrying to look at, because it was all our own.
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youth
potential
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George Eliot |
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2d7e098
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For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-awaited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.
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finale
epilogue
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George Eliot |
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9cdec0a
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Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.
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speech
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George Eliot |
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08362dd
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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.
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George Eliot |
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0308fd2
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I thought it was all over with me, and there was nothing to try for-only things to endure.
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George Eliot |
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40904d6
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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.
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evangelism
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George Eliot |
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d03f895
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He was conscious of being irritated by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation. Why was he making any fuss about Mrs. Casaubon? And yet he felt as if something had happened to him with regard to her. 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.
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George Eliot |
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7944e8a
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We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of us. For, tell the most impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or his shirt-lap hanging out, and that he is tickling people by the oddity of his person, instead of thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would infallibly dry ..
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George Eliot |
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4f07c40
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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.
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suicide
wrong
compassion
love
bookish
gentleman
foreboding
caring
insight
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George Eliot |
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b571cbf
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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 tak..
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George Eliot |
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930546f
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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 sun..
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George Eliot |
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6a056bf
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Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
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pain
happier-times
middlemarch
intellectual
misery
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George Eliot |
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3c96a02
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In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling ill in body, beyond some..
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George Eliot |
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54cc9a2
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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 sp..
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George Eliot |
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dd32e17
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A man carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.
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fallibility
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George Eliot |
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457b89d
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We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own case link us indissolubly with the established order.
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George Eliot |
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c541e29
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That is beautiful mysticism, it is a--" "Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. "You will say it is Persian, or something geographical. It is my life. I have found it out and cannot part with it."
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George Eliot |
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b0ca0f3
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The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists 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 imm..
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George Eliot |
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d11e04d
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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 looke..
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George Eliot |
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94830e0
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A woman may get to love by degrees--the best fire does not flare up the soonest.
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passion
timing
patience
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George Eliot |
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bdefb82
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people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.
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George Eliot |
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2f1e7e3
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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 th..
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validation
intellect
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George Eliot |
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9c4d2ab
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But he had something else to curse--his own viscious folly, which now seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and vices do when their promptings have long passed away.
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George Eliot |
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eb1a3a1
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We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence.
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George Eliot |