Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot

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Page 23 - there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.
Page 40 - Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory ; but do not impose on us any sesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pothouse, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world — those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters...
Page 109 - We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, - if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn's hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops.
Page 211 - We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves ; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before every thing else, because our souls see it is good.
Page 155 - In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads, them forth gently toward a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
Page 286 - Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.
Page 65 - Look there, now! I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work, and was afraid o
Page 216 - And you are flying from your debts: the debt of a Florentine woman ; the debt of a wife. You are turning your back on the lot that has been appointed for you — you are going to choose another. But can man or woman choose duties ? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother. My daughter, you are fleeing from the presence of God into the wilderness.
Page 145 - ... birch at one end and the alphabet at th' other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o' these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish.
Page v - The George Eliot Birthday Book. Printed on fine paper, with red border, and handsomely bound in cloth, gilt. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. And in French morocco or Russia, 5s. ESSAYS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS. Originally published in the 'Saturday Review.

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