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George Eliot quotes (77) An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down. George Eliot Category: Ass Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this that he would not have had to represent the truth of change only to give stability to one beautiful moment. George Eliot Category: Art Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions bring their provisions to a common table and mess together feeding out of the common store according to their appetite. George Eliot Category: Passion Pain is no evil unless it conquers us. George Eliot Category: Pain Ive never any pity for conceited people because I think they carry their comfort about with them. George Eliot Category: Comfort There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. George Eliot Category: Fault 'Tis God gives skill But not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins Without Antonio. George Eliot Category: Skill Our deeds still travel with us from afar And what we have been makes us what we are. George Eliot Category: Deeds Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. George Eliot Category: Action A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side. George Eliot Category: Patronizing Animals are such agreeable friends they ask no questions they pass no criticisms. George Eliot Category: Question Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement much disputation and yet more personal liking. George Eliot Category: Friendship The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another. George Eliot Category: Duty Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. George Eliot Category: If People who cant be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate. George Eliot Category: Wit He who rules must humor full as much as he commands. George Eliot Category: Humor Iteration like friction is likely to generate heat instead of progress. George Eliot Category: Repeat What makes life dreary is the want of a motive. George Eliot Category: Indifference The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice. George Eliot Category: Growth The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance. George Eliot Category: Acquaintance Blows are sarcasms turned stupid. George Eliot Category: Sarcasm 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. George Eliot Category: Beauty The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection. George Eliot Category: Conquer No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. George Eliot Category: Trust Excessive literary production is a social offense. George Eliot Category: Writing We hand folks over to God's mercy and show none ourselves. George Eliot Category: Mercy Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. George Eliot Category: Nothing Im proof against that word failure. Ive seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. George Eliot Category: Factory Any coward can fight a battle when hes sure of winning but give me the man who has pluck to fight when hes sure of losing. Thats my way sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat. George Eliot Category: Cowardice It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves. George Eliot Category: Happiness Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances. George Eliot Category: Unsorted Few women I fear have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age. George Eliot Category: Age There is only one failure in life possible and that is not to be true to the best one knows. George Eliot Category: Life There is no feeling except the extremes of fear and grief that does not find relief in music. George Eliot Category: Music It is easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient. George Eliot Category: Patience Its but little good youll do awatering the last years crop. George Eliot Category: Delay In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness. George Eliot Category: Dull More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. George Eliot Category: Pity When death the great reconciler has come it is never our tenderness that we repent of but our severity. George Eliot Category: Death For what is love itself for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love. George Eliot Category: Love What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other. George Eliot Category: Help The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action choice resolved memory. George Eliot Category: Principle 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. George Eliot Category: Dream What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope. George Eliot Category: Despair No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. George Eliot Category: Appreciation If we had a keen vision and feeling it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrels heart beat and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. George Eliot Category: Grass Breed is stronger than pasture. George Eliot Category: Ancestors Abstinence is whereby a man refraineth from anything which he may lawfully claim. George Eliot Category: Abstinence A womans hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them. George Eliot Category: Hope Cruelty like every other vice requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity. George Eliot Category: Cruel To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy. George Eliot Category: Diploma With memory set smarting like a reopened wound a mans past is not simply a dead history an outworn preparation of the present: it is a still quivering part of himself bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame. George Eliot Category: Past He was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. George Eliot Category: Sun Blessed is the man who having nothing to say abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact. George Eliot Category: Discretion The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world. George Eliot Category: Success What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? George Eliot Category: Lonely A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. George Eliot Category: Diet Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are just as they are often better. George Eliot Category: Virtue An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. George Eliot Category: Peace I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made em to match the men. George Eliot Category: Man Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. George Eliot Category: Anger The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision. George Eliot Category: Tolerance Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution. George Eliot Category: Opposition Hatred is like fire; it makes even light rubbish deadly. George Eliot Category: Hate One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymens miseries is to go and look at their pleasures. George Eliot Category: Potential In spite of his practical ability some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. George Eliot Category: Quotations 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. George Eliot Category: Begin I desire no future that will break the ties with the past. George Eliot Category: Future Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other? George Eliot Category: Smile One must be poor to know the luxury of giving. George Eliot Category: Charity Among all forms of mistake prophecy is the most gratuitous. George Eliot Category: Prophecy No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty. George Eliot Category: Certainty Hell is oneself; Hell is alone the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone. George Eliot Category: Hell I should like to know what is the proper function of women if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out. George Eliot Category: Bachelors Blessed is the influence of one true loving human soul on another. George Eliot Category: Influence Its them as take advantage that get advantage i this world. George Eliot Category: Competence It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because ones own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care. George Eliot Category: Discontent |
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