{"author":"George Eliot","author_id":"George+Eliot","total_quotes":363,"quotes":[{"text":"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. Even idleness is eager now—eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["contemplation","leisure","technology"],"id":2365,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"Excellence encourages one about life generally it shows the spiritual wealth of the world. ","author":"George Eliot","tags":["life","spiritual","excellence "],"id":3250,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["rules"],"id":6409,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["calling","evangelism"],"id":8516,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?","author":"George Eliot","tags":["helping","people"],"id":9018,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"'Tis what I love determines how I love.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["happiness"],"id":10210,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["decisions"],"id":10931,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"Our deeds still travel with us from afar  and what we have been makes us what we are.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["past"],"id":13267,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as 'light,' 'sound,' 'stars,' 'music'—words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than 'chips' or 'sawdust.' It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, 'light' and 'music,' stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["language","love","spring"],"id":13999,"author_id":"George+Eliot"},{"text":"On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.","author":"George Eliot","tags":["fondness","friendship","intimacy","love"],"id":16518,"author_id":"George+Eliot"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":363,"pages":37,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}