Esther > Esther's Quotes

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”
― George Eliot

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
― George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

“One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be
loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot
cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never
loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts
too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.
But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“He loved her, and would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“She had a bracelet on one taper arm, which would fall down over her round wrist. Mr. Thornton watched the replacing of this troublesome ornament with far more attention than he listened to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated him to see her push it up impatiently, until it tightened her soft flesh; and then to mark the loosening—the fall. He could almost have exclaimed—'There it goes, again!”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South