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The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.

George Eliot

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George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Scanty
Things
Petty
Gasping
Life
Breathe
Condemns
Misery
Breathes
Air
Youth
Sore
Joy
Framed
Athirst
Worst
Noblest
Shallows
Nature
Joys

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Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.
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Consequences are unpitying.
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All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!
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A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge.
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The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.
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Life's a vast sea That does its mighty errand without fail, Painting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.
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To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou hast learned to understand all.
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It is very difficult to be learned it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.
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Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries.
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There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that-to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
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Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead.
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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?' said Sir James. 'He has one foot in the grave.' 'He means to draw it out again, I suppose.
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For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal-this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.
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A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.
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There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.
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The tread Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, And hears them never pause, but pass and die.
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But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.
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There's times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke will be broke.
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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.
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