Quotes from George Eliot

I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't.

No, dear, no, said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek. Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.

Romola had had contact with no mind that could stir the larger possibilities of her nature; they lay folded and crushed like embryonic wings, making no element in her consciousness beyond an occasional vague uneasiness.

O radiant Dark! O darkly fostered ray! Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction, a hand is put in theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.

The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward.

But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering.

A vigorous young mind not overbalanced by passion, finds a good in making acquaintance with life, and watches its own powers with interest.

he was a likable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our friends.

The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise, Doth ask a drink divine.

If we could hear the squirrel's heartbeat, the sound of the grass growing, we should die of that roar.