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3cf5625
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To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
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joy
soul
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George Eliot |
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ef54e34
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I shall never love anybody. I can't love people. I hate them.' 'The time will come, dear, the time will come.
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George Eliot |
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9cddef4
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eh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on. And all we've got to do is to trusten - Master Marner, to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know.
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George Eliot |
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af9fb3c
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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 goodn..
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George Eliot |
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c6f9ae8
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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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security
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George Eliot |
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09a8d67
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It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
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patience
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George Eliot |
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000cf92
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Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage...
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leisure
technology
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George Eliot |
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c81fe26
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The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.
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George Eliot |
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544a9c8
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I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.
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romance
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George Eliot |
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9b3a71d
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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.
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compassion
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George Eliot |
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f10d4e9
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Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents towards itself, and makes the whole life its tributary.
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passion
seed
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George Eliot |
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fc267ac
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It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
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George Eliot |
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094fa6f
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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 thei..
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George Eliot |
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a0546f8
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Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,-however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right; it is at once a staff and a baton.
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prejudice
identity
bourgeois-indulgence
intellectual-laziness
self-righteousness
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George Eliot |
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887235a
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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.
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George Eliot |
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49ee6ce
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What right have such men to represent Christianity--as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly?
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ministry
mediocrity
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George Eliot |
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7b603e1
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But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors. We judge from our own desires, and our neighbors themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.
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George Eliot |
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fade7d1
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Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction,
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George Eliot |
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04c3af1
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You know I have duties--we both have duties--before which feeling must be sacrificed.
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George Eliot |
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91df033
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Surely there was something taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know?
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George Eliot |
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3618345
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For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.
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thoughts
life
influences
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George Eliot |
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9726fc5
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I have never done you injustice. Please remember me," said Dorothea, repressing a rising sob. "Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation. "As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else." --
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George Eliot |
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fd43f47
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Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself d..
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human-nature
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George Eliot |
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765093f
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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.
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love
feeling
intimacy
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George Eliot |
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0d2babf
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In spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he was absolute. He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one else's behalf.
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selflessness
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George Eliot |
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b910c55
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True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his passions - does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.
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George Eliot |
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2515097
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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.
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George Eliot |
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7a296aa
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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 wi..
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marriage
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George Eliot |
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d8454c0
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If we only look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified: by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment.
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George Eliot |
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2a209a9
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But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
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writing-advice
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George Eliot |
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a1ffc96
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No chemical process shows a more wonderful activity than the transforming influence of the thoughts we imagine to be going on in another.
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George Eliot |
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8ca5b26
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It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such feelings continually come across the ties that our former life has made for us -- the ties that have made others dependent on us -- and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in paradise, and we could always see that one being first towards whom -- I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, ..
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George Eliot |
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c5410e8
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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.
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marriage
meekness
patience
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George Eliot |
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897933d
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One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
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George Eliot |
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d88a955
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Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.
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speech
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George Eliot |
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525d2bd
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When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune.
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George Eliot |
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3f96cf5
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I think I shall trusten till I die.
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George Eliot |
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bcb01f9
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Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their mistakes.
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George Eliot |
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2c287d5
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I will wait till after Christmas." What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worthwhile to set about anything we are disinclined to."
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George Eliot |
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024df0c
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Attempts at description are stupid. Who can all at once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances.
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George Eliot |
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62ebaea
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We are all of us denying or fulfilling prayers - and men in their careless deeds walk amidst invisible outstretched arms and pleadings made in vain.
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George Eliot |
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f524fd1
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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.
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George Eliot |
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2be159b
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All choice of words is slang. It marks a class." "There is correct English: that is not slang." "I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets."
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George Eliot |
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679506f
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You must be sure of two things: 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..
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George Eliot |