George Eliot Quotes About Joy

• Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

  George Eliot

  Friendship, Happiness, Smile

• My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

  George Eliot

  Compassion, Joy, Suffering

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot's Life, Complete: Top Novelist Focus”, p.237, 谷月社

• The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.

  George Eliot

  Mother, Moving, Animal

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.15

• 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.

  George Eliot

  Sports, Ignorance, Knowledge

  George Eliot (1876). “Daniel Deronda”, p.38

• Joy is the best of wine.

  George Eliot

  Wine, Joy

  George Eliot (1861). “Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe”, p.80

• For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

  George Eliot

  Love, Heart, Caring

  George Eliot (2016). “Daniel Deronda: Top Novelist Focus”, p.690, 谷月社

• There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

  George Eliot

  Peace, Morning, Pain

  "Felix Holt, the Radical". Book by George Eliot. Introductory chapter, 1866.

• Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhaltations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence.

  George Eliot

  Joy, Soul, Desire

  George Eliot (1876). “Daniel Deronda0: Collection of British and American Authors”, p.2

• Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead.

  George Eliot

  Joy, Woe, Fine

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6138, Delphi Classics

• So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood; doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot; but it is gone forever from our imagination, and we can only believe in the joy of childhood.

  George Eliot

  Mother, Morning, Memories

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.157, Wordsworth Editions

• It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge.

  George Eliot

  Men, Joy, Forever

  George Eliot (1873). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life”, p.148

• The worst of misery
  Is when a nature framed for noblest things
  Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
  And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
  Gasping from out the shallows.

  George Eliot

  Air, Joy, Misery

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.444

• There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer.

  George Eliot

  Men, Joy, Forever

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.10

• ... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.

  George Eliot

  Morning, Joy, Soul

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.603

• Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.

  George Eliot

  Love, Memories, Blessing

  George Eliot (2009). “Daniel Deronda”, p.693, Oxford Paperbacks

• Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.

  George Eliot

  Past, Joy, Sorrow

  George Eliot (1955). “The George Eliot Letters: 1878-1880”

• In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

  George Eliot

  Happiness, Wisdom, Laughter

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.1223, Delphi Classics

• Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.

  George Eliot

  Love, Dark, Blue

  George Eliot (2006). “Middlemarch: Easyread Edition”, p.35, ReadHowYouWant.com

• To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

  George Eliot

  Strong, Joy, Soul

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.190, Penguin

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