Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Religion, like all things, begins with self, And naught is known, until one knows himself. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
“Strange, that some of us, with quick alternative vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
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
Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
For character too is a process and an unfoldingamong our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity,… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self-… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Letter-writing I imagine is counted as 'work' from which you must abstain, and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat; it turns timidity into fierce courage, and dreadless… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
He had the superficial kindness of a good-humored, self-satisfied nature, that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties. — George Eliot Copy Share Image
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
For character too is a process and an unfolding. . . among our valued friends is there not someone or other who… — George Eliot Copy Share Image
O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live… — 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
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
Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill. — George Eliot Copy Share
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
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
“[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
“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
“... 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
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
And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better. — George Eliot Copy Share
“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
“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
Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial… — George Eliot Copy Share
“Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.” — George Eliot Copy Share
even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt… — George Eliot Copy Share
