George Eliot Quotes
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It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.
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Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs.
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I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight-that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
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One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.
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Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.
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If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.
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The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
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If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
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That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.
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College mostly makes people like bladders-just good for nothing but t'hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.
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"Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.
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Blows are sarcasms turned stupid.
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Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.
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Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love.
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The bow always strung ... will not do.
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There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration.
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I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.
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We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.
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Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.
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Life's a vast sea That does its mighty errand without fail, Painting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.
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Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
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Brothers are so unpleasant.
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The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence.