Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by George Eliot

Image
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne and flows by the path of obedience.
George Eliot
Image
Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
George Eliot
Image
Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.
George Eliot
Image
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
George Eliot
Image
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
George Eliot
Image
Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,--the ties that have made others dependent on us,--and would cut them in two.
George Eliot
Image
The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.
George Eliot
Image
There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
George Eliot
Image
I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me
George Eliot
Image
The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
George Eliot
Image
Starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags , we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.
George Eliot
Image
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.
George Eliot
Image
Pride only helps us to be generous it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
George Eliot
Image
... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.
George Eliot
Image
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
George Eliot
Image
Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.
George Eliot
Image
Quarrel? Nonsense we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
George Eliot
Image
To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is the sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue.
George Eliot
Image
O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.
George Eliot
Image
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.
George Eliot