I.B. George Quotes

Who can prove Wit to be witty when with deeper ground Dulness intuitive declares wit dull?

Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.

What if my words Were meant for deeds.

Our growing thought Makes growing revelation.

I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour-or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.

What is your religion? I mean-not what you know about religion but the belief that helps you most?

I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world ... profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove.

Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

God, immortality, duty - how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third.

It is time the clergy are told that thinking men, after a close examination of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development and, therefore, positively noxious.

A perverted moral judgment belongs to the dogmatic system.

Subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly impossible, and what will be the remainder?

When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope.

Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth.

A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.

Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries.

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.

We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.

It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.

autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs.

I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.

Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.

There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.

We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.

It's no trifle at her time at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution.

We cannot reform our forefathers.

You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback.

O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them.

I wish always to be quoted as George Eliot.

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.

Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.

In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also.

Opinions: men's thoughts about great subjects. Taste: their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior, amusements, ornaments.

The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.

A common fallacy: to imagine a measure will be easy because we have private motives for desiring it.

The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.

I love words; they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind.

trouble always seems heavier when it is only one's thought and not one's bodily activity that is employed about it.

My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.

There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart.

There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.

There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.

... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.

Net the large fish and you are sure to have the small fry.

I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.

If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial.

When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.

Brothers are so unpleasant.