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The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.
George Eliot
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Come in, Adam, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee.
George Eliot
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All our ignorance brings us closer to death.
George Eliot
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Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.
George Eliot
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The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.
George Eliot
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Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow.
George Eliot
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All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!
George Eliot
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A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
George Eliot
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Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.
George Eliot
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With thy coming Melody was come. This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, And that immeasurable life to know From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, A seed primeval that has forests bred.
George Eliot
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'I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day,' said Mr. Irwine. 'No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things'.
George Eliot
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So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.
George Eliot
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You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.
George Eliot
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Human experience is usually paradoxical.
George Eliot
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They the royal – hearted women are Who nobly love the noblest, yet have grace For needy suffering lives in lowliest place, Carrying a choicer sunlight in their smile, The heavenliest ray that pitieth the vile.
George Eliot
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There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of - to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
George Eliot
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It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
George Eliot
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She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, - when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent.
George Eliot
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A proud woman who has learned to submit carries all her pride to the reinforcement of her submission, and looks down with severe superiority on all feminine assumption as unbecoming.
George Eliot
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Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
George Eliot
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I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone.
George Eliot
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They kissed each other with a deep joy. What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
George Eliot
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Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.
George Eliot
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It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.
George Eliot
