George Eliot Quotes
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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.
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A blush is no language; only a dubious flag - signal which may mean either of two contradictories.
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Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.
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The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; . . .
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Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.
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Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.
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As they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men.
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If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.
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But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
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I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson.
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Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.
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Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.
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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'.
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Inclination snatches argumentsTo make indulgence seem judicious choice.
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It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue.
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The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite.
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Sympathetic people often don't communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.
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'Jubal,' the face said, 'I am thy loved Past, The soul that makes thee one from first to last. I am the angel of thy life and death, Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath. Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride Who blest thy lot above all men's beside?
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Justice is like the kingdom of God--it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.
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Certain winds will make men's temper bad.
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It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
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We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.
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Don't judge a book by its cover.
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'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.