Quotes

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot His soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot Our vanities differ as our noses do. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot He was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot 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 A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power. ~ Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith "The debts we owe ourselves are the hardest to pay." ~ Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith The world prefers decorum to honesty. ~ Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith