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186bbe6
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Each position has its corresponding duties.
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George Eliot |
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5ae43b8
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Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.
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George Eliot |
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eac3156
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We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.
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silence
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George Eliot |
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e081b30
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It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of the Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow liv..
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George Eliot |
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5aad3a2
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I don't mind [being ugly], do you?
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ugliness
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George Eliot |
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330268c
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A bit o' bread's what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's stomachs are made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know, God help 'em.
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novelty
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George Eliot |
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0497f4f
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Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humour?' said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. 'The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.' 'With all my heart. But then you ..
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George Eliot |
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24d4e92
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Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the..
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George Eliot |
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a1bc937
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Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, 'You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I daresay you are a little bored here with our good d..
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George Eliot |
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bc8447d
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it seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain.
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George Eliot |
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16fa785
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She looked at Will with a direct glance, full of delighted confidence. "You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?" said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea. She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had turned her head and was looking out of the window on ..
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George Eliot |
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9ba6f21
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No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?
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George Eliot |
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308c8db
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Mrs. Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterwards to her husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.
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George Eliot |
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286194f
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Our deeds determine us, as long as we determine our deeds
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George Eliot |
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69f7359
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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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George Eliot |
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2281732
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Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
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George Eliot |
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84ca0be
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It did occur to him that he could perhaps get some help by praying for it; but as the prayers he said every evening were forms learned by heart, he rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition for which he was not aware of any precedent.
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George Eliot |
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44a3186
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still--it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing.
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George Eliot |
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7941a37
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A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling their solitary moments with hastily-snatched caresses, are prepared for their future life together as the novice is prepared for the cloister--by experiencing its utmost contrast.
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George Eliot |
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247162e
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And there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early memory, that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely through my present sensibilities to form and colour, but the long companion of my existence that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid.
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George Eliot |
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0a7f7d6
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Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by," is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep ove..
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George Eliot |
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e59a2d5
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That plain, middle-aged face, with a grave penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if it had been a promise.
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George Eliot |
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d81b7e5
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It might seem singular that Nancy--with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience--should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge--singular, if we did not know that human beliefs, like ..
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George Eliot |
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6289cda
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Before such calm external beauty the presence of a vague fear is more distinctly felt - like a raven flapping its slow wing across the sunny air.
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George Eliot |
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ae53d26
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I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice.
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writing
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George Eliot |
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6a3da4e
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There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
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George Eliot |
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d2bc748
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It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshiping this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the husband in question. Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
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George Eliot |
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5bb1fee
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In my opinion, legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require knowledge of another kind. People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on any particular subject, unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is no better than an old woman at a post-mortem examination.
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George Eliot |
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d8a7708
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Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light," "sound," "stars," "music"--words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, ..
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love
spring
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George Eliot |
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60217d0
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I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.
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George Eliot |
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623309c
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I am not quite sure whether clever men ever dance.
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George Eliot |
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2d26ae7
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The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.
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personal-history
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George Eliot |
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873c09c
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Mrs. Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over her husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she wishes, or the reverse...
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George Eliot |
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99ce5a5
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There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough.
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fatigue
uncertainty
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George Eliot |
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09c4564
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Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.
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science
dogma
mistake
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George Eliot |
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45bbd05
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To the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished.
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George Eliot |
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ed057e4
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There are episodes in most men's lives in which their highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill their inward version.
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George Eliot |
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dfbe495
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The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of their self-satisfaction--as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever.
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George Eliot |
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ec013ae
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To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.
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correction
motive
prophecy
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George Eliot |
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ccb3b24
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the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
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George Eliot |
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3d96d92
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Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
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George Eliot |
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5755dc3
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To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, "I will not believe unproved evil of you: my lips should not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it. I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts. Your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater. Let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling -" to have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, ..
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George Eliot |
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89fec9e
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We insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
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George Eliot |
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20d317a
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The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration a..
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George Eliot |