Quotes from George Eliot

Choice is the strongest principle of growth.

The character of the publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dullness of our own jokes.

But at night came his revelry: at night he closed his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold. Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent themselves flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the dark leather mouths!

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

No sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent, than she receives the tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticised.

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; and the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass, was fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished home.

There was no reason why I should go anywhere. The world about me seemed like a vision that was hurrying by while I stood still with my pain.

In marriage, the certainty, 'She will never love me much,' is easier to bear than the fear, 'I shall love her no more.

It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness.

the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.

There's Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among 'em. I read

But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from the chair, the world was new to him by a presentment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed was knowledge.