George Eliot
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: Nature
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.Collection: Wisdom
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.
There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.
The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.
Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.
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.
Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.
It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.
No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.
Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
Consequences are unpitying.
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.
People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.
Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.
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.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.
Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.
When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.