"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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Quote collection
George Eliot quotes (page 11 of 51)
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"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand."
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"You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another."
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"For character too is a process and an unfoldingamong our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?"
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"Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows."
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"Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat."
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"There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear."
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"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music."
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"I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe."
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"There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness."
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"It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care."
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"Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion."
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"Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another"
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"Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly"
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"The tread Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, And hears them never pause, but pass and die."
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"A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it."
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"Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity."
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"There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life."
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"The devil tempts us not--'tis we tempt him, Reckoning his skill with opportunity."
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"I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do."
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