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7c417af
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Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.
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George Eliot |
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61a12b0
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Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
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jealousy
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George Eliot |
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ae2f72b
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There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.
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George Eliot |
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7c1fea4
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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.
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wisdom
knowledge
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George Eliot |
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b88cd8d
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Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.
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poverty
work
knowledge
memory
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George Eliot |
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cd7bedc
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When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.
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George Eliot |
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0305291
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After all, the true seeing is within.
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within
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George Eliot |
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b5aa127
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A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
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humor
society
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George Eliot |
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c5b94b1
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Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others.
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pride
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George Eliot |
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a4f4687
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I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.
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George Eliot |
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66189a9
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Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
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George Eliot |
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c7c0e58
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For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.
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thought
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George Eliot |
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0e27fe2
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Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.
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George Eliot |
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4897274
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Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a 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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soul-mate
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George Eliot |
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b0aab6a
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I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.
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self-doubt
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George Eliot |
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2078aff
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Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.
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parenthood
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George Eliot |
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5cf8c71
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It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings - much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.
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George Eliot |
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c42154b
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Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult....Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings -- much harder than to say something fine about them which is the exact truth.
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truth
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George Eliot |
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8069bea
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Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
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witty
vanity
pride
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George Eliot |
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2003184
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She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel - that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
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George Eliot |
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dd6ef8e
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The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the pr..
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shame
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George Eliot |
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5337f60
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When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
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George Eliot |
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7061203
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People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.
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neighbors
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George Eliot |
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96de802
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Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
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limit
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George Eliot |
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e2ea590
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Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.
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poets
sages
saints
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George Eliot |
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ee53f57
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If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.
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George Eliot |
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f133b45
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Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within--can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
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George Eliot |
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efd1971
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The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.
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mood
temper
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George Eliot |
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f487f4e
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I should like to make life beautiful--I mean everybody's life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from it." I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously. "You might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement. If you carried it ou..
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George Eliot |
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b0c92b3
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Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me--my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker.
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love
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George Eliot |
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374e9d3
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Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the consequences of their recklessness.
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infatuation
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George Eliot |
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1eb0a30
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She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.
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truth
preception
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George Eliot |
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b47ceca
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Few things hold the perception more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say
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George Eliot |
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944c03a
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If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
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rage
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George Eliot |
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0b57497
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Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.
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mourning
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George Eliot |
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04d1897
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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..
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George Eliot |
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641464f
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There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows--in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain--in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine-..
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satisfaction
sorrow
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George Eliot |
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29fa383
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We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.
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words
literature
feeling
growth
experience
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George Eliot |
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eb315bc
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I protest against any absolute conclusion.
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George Eliot |
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03e3fad
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Because, dear, 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; the people we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies; we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our fellow men. There is no man or woman born into this world to who..
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George Eliot |
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1672d1f
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It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.
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George Eliot |
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b43eb2e
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A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.
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submission
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George Eliot |
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df255b6
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The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.
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faith
friendship
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George Eliot |
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681873e
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In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
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George Eliot |