George Eliot Quotes
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Man finds his pathways: at first they were foot-tracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness; now they are swift and invisible: his thought dives through the ocean, and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways yet? What reaches him, stays with him, rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its pathway.
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Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.
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What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.
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... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.
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The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.
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Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries.
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Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means -one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.
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Religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
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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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What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.
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After all, the true seeing is within.
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Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
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I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.
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No man can be wise on an empty stomach.
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A bachelor's children are always young: they're immortal children - always lisping, waddling, helpless, and with a chance of turning out good.
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I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha been left to the men.
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There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.
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There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change an' change an' not better yourself when all's said an' done.
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The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
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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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A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
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There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
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But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?
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Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.