George Eliot Quotes
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It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicians can wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas.
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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. . . .
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The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of sorrow.
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Hatred is like fire, it makes even light rubbish deadly.
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All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!
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We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.
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Hopes have precarious life. They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness.
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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.
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The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
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Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.
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The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.
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The stars are golden fruit upon a tree all out of reach.
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In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.
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Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
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I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.
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We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
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For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
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The sweetest of all success is that which one wins by hard exertion.
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Where Jack isn't safe, Tom's in danger.
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One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.
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When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.
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In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fiber of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
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She hates everything that is not what she longs for.
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What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!