Quotes from George Eliot

What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

We see human heroism broken into units and say, this unit did little—might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with.

Marner took her into his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and feeling were so confused with him, that if he had tried to give them utterance, he could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold--that the gold had turned into the child.

She saw the years to come stretch before her like an autumn afternoon, filled with resigned memory. Life to her could never more have any eagerness; it was a solemn service of gratitude and patient effort. She walked in the presence of unseen witnesses—of the Divine love that had rescued her, of the human love that waited for its eternal repose until it had seen her endure to the end.

Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness.

Oh, mother," said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, "I don't want to do my patchwork." "What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt Glegg?" "It's foolish work," said Maggie, with a toss of her mane,—"tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again.

There is a fine line between loneliness and independence.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

Our deeds travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are.