George Eliot Quotes

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge. ~ Middlemarch by 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? ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot Doubtless 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. ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot "Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease." ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot "There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel." ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. ~ Adam Bede by 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. ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot "It seems to me now, if I was to find Father at home to-night, I should behave different; but there's no knowing--perhaps nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late." ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot