George Eliot
As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey.Collection: Feet
Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He 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.Collection: Wise
There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate.Collection: Hero
Husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.Collection: Husband
The human heart finds nowhere shelter but in human kind.Collection: Sympathy
What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.Collection: Omission
Our consciences are not all of the same pattern.Collection: Patterns
When you've been used to doing things, and they've been taken away from you, it's as if your hands had been cut off, and you felt the fingers as are of no use to you.Collection: Taken
Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts, Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence; Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line, May languish with the scurvy.Collection: Running
Religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.Collection: Savages
Man finds his pathways: at first they were foot-tracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness; now they are swift and invisible: his thought dives through the ocean, and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways yet? What reaches him, stays with him, rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its pathway.Collection: Ocean
When we are dead : it is the living only who cannot be forgiven the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind .Collection: Rain
A man's a man. But when you see a king, you see the work of many thousand men.Collection: Kings
The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of the times, a chief obstacle to true culture.Collection: Culture
A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.Collection: Squirrels
The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence.Collection: Dog
Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.Collection: Heart
The best part of a woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses, too, that were let fall, ready to soothe the wearied feet.Collection: Fall
The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.Collection: Animal
I think I am quite wicked with roses. I like to gather them, and smell them till they have no scent left.Collection: Thinking
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.Collection: Soul
A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.Collection: Horse
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.Collection: Believe
Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the domain of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.Collection: Grief
Things are achieved when they are well begun.Collection: Wells
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.Collection: Hate
It's all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.Collection: Country
I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible.Collection: Giving Up
All our ignorance brings us closer to death.Collection: Ignorance
There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.Collection: Love
Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?Collection: Love
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.Collection: Love
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.Collection: Love
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.Collection: Evil
Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.Collection: Thinking
Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.Collection: Sympathy
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.Collection: Art
In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.Collection: Strong
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.Collection: Family
The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.Collection: Anger
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; 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.Collection: Beauty
Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.Collection: Beauty
We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.Collection: Light
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?Collection: Morning
It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.Collection: Inspirational
Don't judge a book by its coverCollection: Book
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.Collection: Music
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.Collection: Thinking
It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.Collection: Cutting