259 quotes
We must not inquire too curiously into motives…. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them.
The Lifted Veil (1859)
No eye saw him, while with loving pride
Each voice with each in praise of Jubal vied.
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger — not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
The song shall spread and swell as rivers do,
And I will teach our youth with skill to woo
This living lyre, to know its secret will;
Its fine division of the good and ill.
So shall men call me sire of harmony,
And where great Song is, there my life shall be.
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
While the arm is strong to strike and heave,
Let soul and arm give shape that will abide...
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it...
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
[W]hat we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
Middlemarch (1872)
Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self.
Middlemarch (1871)
Blessed influence of one true, loving human soul on another. Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasselled flower.
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?
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
Our deeds still travel with us from afar.
And what we have been makes us what we are.
the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families . . .
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Nice distinctions are troublesome.
And rank for her meant duty, various,
Yet equal in its worth, done worthily.
Command was service; humblest service done
By willing and discerning souls was glory.
He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
"I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things".
Adam Bede (1859)