George Eliot quotes - page 7

There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it. (George Eliot)
But certain winds will make men's temper bad. View quote
George Eliot
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world. View quote
George Eliot
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. View quote
George Eliot
It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us. View quote
George Eliot
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through. View quote
George Eliot
So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore. View quote
George Eliot
People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are. View quote
George Eliot
So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, Breathing a beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. View quote
George Eliot
Knightly love is blent with reverence As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue. View quote
George Eliot
It was a still afternoon--the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. (George Eliot)
Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill. View quote
George Eliot
How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love Are their first poems their best Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections. View quote
George Eliot
The natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot. View quote
George Eliot
. . . it was the last weakness he meant to indulge in and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow. View quote
George Eliot
Worldly faces, never look so worldly as at a funeral. View quote
George Eliot
Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than leave it him in your will. View quote
George Eliot
But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man. View quote
George Eliot
She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep--only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky--before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway. View quote
George Eliot
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. View quote
George Eliot
If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. (George Eliot)
If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out. View quote
George Eliot
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir and there are many victories worse than a defeat. View quote
George Eliot
That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled. View quote
George Eliot
There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination. View quote
George Eliot