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b928495
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No," said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast with his usually careless and unemphatic speech--"there's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to somebody else."
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George Eliot |
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30a7960
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We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our little hurts will be made much of - to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
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George Eliot |
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79f357b
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I daresay some would never get their eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of their own actions
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George Eliot |
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c5fa99f
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The promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach,--impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.
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George Eliot |
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845aaaf
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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 parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader."
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bookworm
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George Eliot |
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97e6821
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He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of life. Silas's hand satisfied itself with throwing the shuttle, and his eye with seeing the little squares in the cloth complete themselves under his effort. Then there were the calls of hunger; and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his ..
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George Eliot |
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614d48f
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When the commonplace "We must all die" transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must die-- and soon," then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first."
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George Eliot |
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0db06f2
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And Casaubon had done a wrong to Dorothea in marrying her. A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow grey crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. 'It is the most horrible of virgin sacrifices,' said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail.
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George Eliot |
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1f526f0
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I call it improper pride to let fool's notions hinder you from doing a good action. There's no sort of work," said Caleb, with fervor, putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, "that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow."
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George Eliot |
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b2a5545
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When uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts: the same words, the same scenes are revolved over and over again, the same mood accompanies them--the end of the year finds them as much what they were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a recurrent series of movemen..
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George Eliot |
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62a25b1
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Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague, uneasy longings sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.
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George Eliot |
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b3b6a4a
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It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us indissolubly with the established..
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materialism
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George Eliot |
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6c4a09e
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Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry--the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy--"Such as I am, she will shortly be."
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George Eliot |
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f635a73
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I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.
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George Eliot |
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701582a
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Our consiousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us anymore than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
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George Eliot |
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b2e153a
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My life is too short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world.
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George Eliot |
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43fc7e2
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A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them.
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George Eliot |
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56fa7b0
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They were very bitter tears: everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie: there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed t..
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George Eliot |
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a1a9548
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She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had marri..
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middlemarch
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George Eliot |
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ded2a43
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Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her-- that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side.
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self-justification
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George Eliot |
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c0c6318
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Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
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George Eliot |
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19b1404
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All these crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived,..
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George Eliot |
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870a516
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I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
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poverty
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George Eliot |
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d610c99
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She had forgotten his faults as we forget the sorrows of our departed childhood.
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George Eliot |
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f34177b
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There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it.
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George Eliot |
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eb00fef
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In poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in.
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George Eliot |
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e494759
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She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was.
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George Eliot |
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6248f6f
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It's an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the shafts of disease.
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George Eliot |
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92ac8a2
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I had a terror of the world. None knew me; all would mistake me. I had seen so many in my life who made themselves glad with scorning, and laughed at another's shame. What could I do? This life seemed to be closing in upon me with a wall of fire--everywhere there was scorching that made me shrink. The high sunlight made me shrink. And I began to think that my despair was the voice of God telling me to die.
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George Eliot |
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e7479ff
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I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender he..
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George Eliot |
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3046b67
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A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.
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vows
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George Eliot |
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11342d5
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Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating.
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George Eliot |
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ec00e7b
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Dorothea, he said to himself, was for ever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher than her footstool...
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George Eliot |
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13701dc
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It's puzzling work, talking is.
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George Eliot |
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616a4e8
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A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping.
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George Eliot |
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d17af1e
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The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimming when once the actions have become a lie.
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lies
pure
lie
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George Eliot |
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0c2244d
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Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the op..
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George Eliot |
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418ac28
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Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer's orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of acti..
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George Eliot |
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829d806
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We don't ask what a woman does; we ask whom she belongs to.
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George Eliot |
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8b5578f
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It's ill guessing what the bats are flying after.
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George Eliot |
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f4ef397
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But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.
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George Eliot |
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0bf5065
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Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers.
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George Eliot |
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d65ea4c
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Hans: [Y]ou can't conceive what a great fellow I'm going to be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within me. Deronda: Only a fungoid growth, I daresay - a crowing disease in the lungs.
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George Eliot |
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eaa3165
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I thirsted for the unknown: the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it: I am content.
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George Eliot |