George Eliot quotes - page 16

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves. (George Eliot)
Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being. View quote
George Eliot
To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. View quote
George Eliot
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable. View quote
George Eliot
Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid-necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections? View quote
George Eliot
Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos. View quote
George Eliot
But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last. View quote
George Eliot
When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech - one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are. View quote
George Eliot
After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think. View quote
George Eliot
Of all forms of human error, prophesy is the most avoidable. View quote
George Eliot
Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. (George Eliot)
Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos. View quote
George Eliot
There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet. View quote
George Eliot
How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts? View quote
George Eliot
Kisses honeyed by oblivion. View quote
George Eliot
There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. View quote
George Eliot
Time, like money, is measured by our needs. View quote
George Eliot
When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks. View quote
George Eliot
Education was almost always a matter of luck usually ill luck in those distant days. View quote
George Eliot
How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends. View quote
George Eliot
Ignorance... is a painless evil so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it. (George Eliot)
It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care. View quote
George Eliot
Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us. View quote
George Eliot
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. View quote
George Eliot
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. View quote
George Eliot