1
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for 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.George Eliot
2
People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.George Eliot
3
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.George Eliot
4
She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.George Eliot
5
I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.George Eliot
6
If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again.George Eliot
7
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.George Eliot
8
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.George Eliot
9
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.George Eliot
10
The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.George Eliot
11
Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.George Eliot
12
Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.George Eliot
13
I cannot imagine myself without some opinion, but I wish to have good reasons for them.George Eliot
14
It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.George Eliot
15
When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.George Eliot
16
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.George Eliot
17
And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.George Eliot
18
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.George Eliot
19
Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.George Eliot
20
Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacing are swung--are scarcely perceptible; momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life to another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.George Eliot