"Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill."
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Quote collection
George Eliot quotes (page 49 of 51)
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"... we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong."
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"... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance."
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"... the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, orthe dulness [sic] of our own jokes."
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"... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable."
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"... we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance."
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"I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now; everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know."
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"The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions."
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"Education is an asset no man can take away."
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"Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead."
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"Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than leave it him in your will."
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"So to live is heaven; to make undying music in the world."
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"One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one!"
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"Of all forms of human error, prophesy is the most avoidable."
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"I not only want to be loved, I want to be told that I'm loved."
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"Subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium."
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"It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium."
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"Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot."
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"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."
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"If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application."
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