George Eliot - Adam Bede (1859)

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A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.

George Eliot
The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.

George Eliot
I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue?

George Eliot
It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.

George Eliot
Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

George Eliot
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 forever from our imagination, and we can only believe in the joy of childhood.

George Eliot
The natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot.

George Eliot
If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plainly dressed.

George Eliot
We mustn't be in a hurry to fix and choose our own lot; we must wait to be guided.

George Eliot
You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

George Eliot
Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.

George Eliot
When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing.

George Eliot
Folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done.

George Eliot
As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.

George Eliot
People who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.

George Eliot
It seems to me now, if I was to find Father at home to-night, I should behave different; but there's no knowing — perhaps nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late.

George Eliot
Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

George Eliot
They kissed each other with a deep joy.
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

George Eliot
Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world; sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off.

George Eliot
Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future.

George Eliot
Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all.

George Eliot
Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

George Eliot
It was a still afternoon — the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.

George Eliot
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

George Eliot
There's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

George Eliot
It is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character that he should be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against smallpox.

George Eliot
If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner.

George Eliot
It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop.

George Eliot
Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

George Eliot
It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience
has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feeling
within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength.
We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicians
can wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas.

George Eliot