George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss (1860)

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Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love...

George Eliot
A man out of temper does not wait for proofs before feeling toward all things, animate and inanimate, as if they were in a conspiracy against him, but at once thrashes his horse or kicks his dog in consequence.

George Eliot
It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a "public."

George Eliot
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

George Eliot
Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

George Eliot
If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.

George Eliot
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

George Eliot
When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window

George Eliot
What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

George Eliot
Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.
And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living, except those whose end we know.

George Eliot
Our life is determined for us — and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing and only think of bearing what is laid upon us and doing what is given us to do.

George Eliot
I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

George Eliot
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

George Eliot
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it...

George Eliot
Surely there was something taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know?

George Eliot
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

George Eliot
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

George Eliot
We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.

George Eliot
Not let them want bread, but only require them to eat it with bitter herbs.

George Eliot
How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice...

George Eliot
There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.

George Eliot
It is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give.

George Eliot
Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.

George Eliot
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.

George Eliot
She one day asked Mr. Stelling if all astronomers hated women, or whether it was only this particular astronomer. But, forestalling his answer, she said, "I suppose it's all astronomers; because, you know, they live up in high towers, and if the women came there, they might talk and hinder them from looking at the stars."

George Eliot
Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them.

George Eliot
No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

George Eliot
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.

George Eliot
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened?

George Eliot
I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon, and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is.

George Eliot