The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life ... can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“To the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished.” — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“I should like to make life beautiful--I mean everybody's life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents towards itself, and… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
No matter whether failure came A thousand different times, For one brief moment of success, Life rang its golden chimes. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“Poor child! it was very early for her to know one of those supreme moments in life when all we have hoped… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.” — George Eliot Copy Share Image
The impulse to confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and in our moments of… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“I had a terror of the world. None knew me; all would mistake me. I had seen so many in my life… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“... she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing the stronger sex… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“But any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
