1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

My life is too short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world.

Hath she her faults? I would you had them too. They are the fruity must of soundest wine; Or say, they are regenerating fire Such as hath turned the dense black element Into a crystal pathway for the sun.

When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

Ci sono personalità in cui, se esse ci amano, siamo consapevoli di avere una sorta di battesimo e di consacrazione: esse ci vincolano alla rettitudine e alla purezza grazie alla loro pura fiducia in noi; e i nostri peccati divengono quel genere peggiore di sacrilegio che abbatte l'invisibile altare della fiducia. “Se tu non sei buono, non lo è nessuno” - queste brevi parole possono conferire un terribile significato alla responsabilità, possono contenere una forza corrosiva per il rimorso.

So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood.

Men, like planets, have both a visible and invisible history.

But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me." "What is that?" said Will, rather jealous of the belief."That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and can not do what we would, we are part of the divine struggle against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.