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Of new acquaintances one can never be sure because one likes them one day that it will be so the next. Of old friends one is sure that it will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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
Yesterday
Likes
Forever
Sure
Friends
Next
Today
Acquaintances
Never
Acquaintance

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Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.
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Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it.
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Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.
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When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.
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To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.
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It is hard to believe long together that anything is worth while, unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.
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I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.
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Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.
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... as usual I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books.
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Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, And righteous or unrighteous, being done, Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself Be laid in stillness, and the universe Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more.
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You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.
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When God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was—he only saw the brightness of the Lord.
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Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
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I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.
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It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon.
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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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Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.
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We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings.
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Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.
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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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