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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
Nature
Joys
Shallows
Things
Petty
Scanty
Life
Breathe
Gasping
Misery
Condemns
Air
Breathes
Youth
Sore
Joy
Framed
Worst
Noblest
Athirst

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A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen.
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The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
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Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
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... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.
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Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.
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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 .
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Music sweeps by me as a messenger - Carrying a message that is not for me
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When we are suddenly released from an acute absorbing bodily pain, our heart and senses leap out in new freedom we think even the noise of streets harmonious, and are ready to hug the tradesman who is wrapping up our change.
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Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit.
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What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.
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Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.
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Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.
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Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.
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The rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families.
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There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.
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That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
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Subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
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Particular lies may speak a general truth.
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Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.
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