George Eliot
In travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools' pleasureCollection: Travel
It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.Collection: Stupid
A good horse makes short miles.Collection: Horse
It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.Collection: Father
Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit anotherCollection: Soul
It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.Collection: World
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.Collection: Men
But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.Collection: Block
I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.Collection: Stars
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.Collection: Vanity
The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.Collection: Passion
To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.Collection: Causes
If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking.Collection: Dog
... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.Collection: Morning
Letter-writing I imagine is counted as 'work' from which you must abstain, and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion that you will like to hear from me. You see, I have asked no questions, which are the torture-screws of correspondence. Hence you have nothing to answer.Collection: Writing
The perpetual mourner -- the grief that can never be healed -- is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning -- a new acquaintance with grief.Collection: Grief
I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves.Collection: Pain
... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.Collection: Reading
... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.Collection: Husband
But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?Collection: May
To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?Collection: Stupidity
We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.Collection: Feelings
Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.Collection: Love
But let the wise be warned against too great readiness to explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.Collection: Wise
The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey-double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day.Collection: Journey
The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.Collection: Pride
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude- roots that can be pulled up.Collection: Friendship
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.Collection: Our Actions
I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.Collection: Thinking
The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.Collection: Tolerance
It's well known there's always two sides, if no more.Collection: Two Sides
Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.Collection: Silence
To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.Collection: Strong
The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.Collection: Writing
Inclination snatches arguments To make indulgence seem judicious choice.Collection: Choices
A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.Collection: Eye
A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen.Collection: Fool
Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.Collection: Wine
One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one!Collection: Believe
A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?Collection: Girl
When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering; the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the waterdrops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst.Collection: Life
Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.Collection: Fall
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.Collection: Pain
A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful hole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.Collection: Love
What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.Collection: Art
In the chequered 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 wine-press. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until Death himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields.Collection: Life
The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.Collection: Artist