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George Eliot Quotes


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To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.
[Policy]

To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.
[Home]

Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
[Vanity]

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.
[Imagination]

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
[Censure]

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.
[Pride]

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

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.
[Motives]

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple; without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness.
[Manners]

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
[Friendship]

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
[Kindness]

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.
[Marriage]

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.
[Opportunity]

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
[Distrust]

What makes life dreary is want of motive.
[Motivation]

What novelty is worth the sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
[Knowledge]


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