If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.
GEORGE ELIOTPeople are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.
More George Eliot Quotes
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There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
GEORGE ELIOT -
People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.
GEORGE ELIOT -
To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.
GEORGE ELIOT -
The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
GEORGE ELIOT -
We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.
GEORGE ELIOT -
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.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Genius … is necessarily intolerant of fetters.
GEORGE ELIOT -
I have nothing to tell except travellers’ stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.
GEORGE ELIOT -
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
GEORGE ELIOT -
Consequences are unpitying.
GEORGE ELIOT