There is a mercy that is weakness, and even treason against the common good.
Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth: we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.--_George Eliot._
"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.--_George Eliot._
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we _must_ hunger after them.--_George Eliot._
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.--_George Eliot._
The true cross of the Redeemer is the sin and sorrow of the world.
They say Fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit.--_George Eliot._
Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system.
There's no slipping up-hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down.
We must put up with our contemporaries, since we can neither live with our ancestors nor posterity.
Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.
It's hard to tell which is Old Harry when everybody's got boots on.
Dirty work wants little talent and no conscience.--_George Eliot._
Men can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason they can see so little o' this side on't.
~Dirt.~--"Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil;" so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.--_George Eliot._
We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent; we cannot kill and not kill at the same moment; but a moment is room enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outflash of a murderous thought, and the sharp backward stroke of repentance.
Roast meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one, another's burnin'.
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.--_George Eliot._
It seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only ones as aren't wanted i' the other world.
A good solid bit of work lasts.
Men's muscles move better when their souls are making merry music.
Scarceness is what there is the biggest stock of in the country.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfil another.
~Temptation.~--No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.--~George Eliot.~
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.
Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.--_George Eliot._
Joy is the best of wine.--_George Eliot._
~Gifts.~--One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!--_George Eliot._
Breed is stronger than pasture.
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
I always think the flowers can see us and know what we are thinking about.--_George Eliot._
Wise books for half the truths they hold are honored tombs.--_George Eliot._
An old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of.--_George Eliot._
Can man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace, or their father and mother.--_George Eliot._
~Toleration.~--The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.--_George Eliot._
~Ideas.~--After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.--_George Eliot._
If the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon.
~Angels.~--In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put in theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.--_George Eliot._
Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished and fed?--_George Eliot._
~Inspiration.~--Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.--_George Eliot._
A chill air surrounds those who are down in the world.
It's no use filling your pocket full of money if you have got a hole in the corner.
"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness.--_George Eliot._
Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?--_George Eliot._
What novelty is worth the sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?--_George Eliot._
People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious and affectionate.
To be a poet is to have a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.
Our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm, as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence.
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.
That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.--_George Eliot._
It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent,--almost like a carrier-pigeon.--_George Eliot._
It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon.--_George Eliot._
I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, which may spoil all.--_George Eliot._
The women are quick enough--they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself.
No man can be wise on an empty stomach.--_George Eliot._
The seeds of things are very small.
This is life to come, — Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, — be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.
The devil tempts us not--'tis we tempt him, / Beckoning his skill with opportunity.
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.--_George Eliot._
Hatred is like fire; it makes even light rubbish deadly.
The first condition of goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.--_George Eliot._
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.--_George Eliot._
Leisure is gone; gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.--_George Eliot._
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice, it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience.--_George Eliot._
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.--_George Eliot._
I know that dancin' 's nonsense; but if you stick at everything because its nonsense, you wonna go far in this life.
We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.--_George Eliot._
It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly made; an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superstitions carry consequences which often verify their hope or their foreboding.--_George Eliot._
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.
Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.--_George Eliot._
There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
Right action is freedom From past and future also. For most of us, this is the aim Never here to be realised; Who are only undefeated Because we have gone on trying; We, content at the last If our temporal reversion nourish (Not too far from the yew-tree) The life of significant soil.
Joy is the best of wine.
The best part of 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.--_George Eliot._
In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.--_George Eliot._
All is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Will not stay still.
Where's the use of a woman's having brains of her own if she's tackled to a geck as everybody's a-laughing at?
It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'.
There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that--to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.--_George Eliot._
That beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly.--_George Eliot._
There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.--_George Eliot._
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
~Retribution.~--Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.--_George Eliot._
Hatred is like fire--it makes even light rubbish deadly.--_George Eliot._
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 base, degraded man.--_George Eliot._
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.--_George Eliot._
As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.--_George Eliot._
Truth has rough flavors if we bite through.--_George Eliot._
What makes life dreary is the want of motive.
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.--_George Eliot._
It's a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another wi' a pipe i' their mouths.
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
Sympathetic people are often uncommunicative about themselves; they give back reflected images which hide their own depths.
One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated.--_George Eliot._
Men learn little from others' experience. But in the life of one man, never the same time returns.
There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work.
Who shall put his finger on the work of justice, and say, "It is there?" Justice is like the kingdom of God--it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.--_George Eliot._
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.--_George Eliot._
There's folks as make bad butter, and trusten to the salt t' hide it.
Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.--_George Eliot._
We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings.--_George Eliot._
Not liberty, but duty, is the condition of existence.
One 'ud think, an' hear some folk talk, as the men war cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.--_George Eliot._
It is in those acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their denial knowledge.--_George Eliot._
If we use common words on a great occasion they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place.--_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.--_George Eliot._
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
Sometimes ideas are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath; they touch us with soft responsive hands; they look upon us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones.
The blessed work of helping the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.--_George Eliot._
You don't value your peas for their roots or your carrots for their flowers. Now that's the way you should choose women.
We reap what we sow, but Nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit that spring from no planting of ours.
Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods.
Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.
You must begin at a low round of the ladder if you mean to get on.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
It is mere cowardice to take safety in negations.
Man cannot choose his duties.
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.--_George Eliot._
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.--_George Eliot._
To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!--_George Eliot._
Life is so complicated a game, that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.
What is a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
The earliest and the longest has still the mastery over us.--_George Eliot._
~Imagination.~--We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.--_George Eliot._
Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistledown.--_George Eliot._
What we have been makes us what we are.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
A great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.
Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?--_George Eliot._
Character is not cut in marble--it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.--_George Eliot._
~Tenderness.~--When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.--_George Eliot._
When your broth's ready-made for you, you mun swallow the thickenin', or else let the broth alone.
~Wrong.~--There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil that is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.--_George Eliot._
The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed.
~Perverseness.~--The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence.--_George Eliot._
It is never too late to be what you might have been
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?--_George Eliot._
It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, I think; folks have to wait long enough before it's brought to 'em.
Life's a reckoning we cannot make twice over.
The finest language is chiefly made up of unimposing words.
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.--_George Eliot._
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.--_George Eliot._
~Good.~--When what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.--_George Eliot._
~Superstition.~--A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel.--_George Eliot._
You make but a poor trap to catch luck if you go and bait it with wickedness.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate We have taken from the defeated What they had to leave us — a symbol: A symbol perfected in death. And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well By the purification of the motive In the ground of our beseeching.
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._
Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the dominion of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.--_George Eliot._
A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.--_George Eliot._
Some folk's tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their inside.
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.--_George Eliot._
Folks must put up with their own kin as they put up with their own noses.
The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.--_George Eliot._
Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.
There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was in their boots.
Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means, one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.--_George Eliot._
Irritation, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.
The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiæ of mental make in which one of us differs from another.--_George Eliot._
What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden.
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.--_George Eliot._
If we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.
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.--_George Eliot._
Our deeds are like children born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Children may be strangled, but deeds never.