Quotes from George Eliot, Adam Bede

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

A woman may get to love by degrees—the best fire does not flare up the soonest.

Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally, though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific information.

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.

The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.

Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.

The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest.

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Yes, that's the worst of it. It's a desperately vexatious thing that, after all one's reflections and quiet determinations, we should be ruled by moods that one can't calculate on beforehand.

...that freshness of feeling, that delicate honor which shrinks from wounding even a sentiment...

[H]e was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.

But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.

She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the moon rules the tides.

And he could glance at her continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams stole through the thick apple-tree boughs and rested on her round cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her.

Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.

He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself...

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

College mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

Timid people always reek their peevishness on the gentle.