259 quotes
When we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven—the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind.
Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character.
Romola (1863)
This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow.
O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)
For thoughts are so great—aren't they, sir?
They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood.
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
Middlemarch (1871)
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.
Adam Bede (1859)
So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity.
Adam Bede (1859)
The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them.
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
Daniel Deronda (1876)
May I unceasingly aspire to unclothe all around me of its conventional, human, temporary dress, to look at it in its essence and in its relation to eternity.
One can say everything best over a meal.
Adam Bede (1859)
Anger seeks its prey,—
Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw,
Likes not to go off hungry, leaving Love
To feast on milk and honeycomb at will.
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)
What if my words
Were meant for deeds.
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)
His smile is sweetened by his gravity.
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)
There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.
Middlemarch (1871)
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
Middlemarch (1871)
Each day he wrought and better than he planned,
Shape breeding shape beneath his restless hand.
(The soul without still helps the soul within,
And its deft magic ends what we begin.)
The Legend of Jubal (1869)