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There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

George Eliot

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George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Moments
Despair
Despaired
Firsts
Sorrow
Recovered
First
Learning
Healed
Great
Doubt
Suffered
Known
Aging
Suffering
Absolutes
Hope
Absolute
Comes
Sadness

More quotes by George Eliot

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Anger seek it prey,-- Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Like not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will.
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Trouble's made us kin.
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In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fiber of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
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What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
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The bow always strung ... will not do.
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Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.
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Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.
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There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room.
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I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged.
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Satan was a blunderer ... who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him, and his portrait would have been more flattering.
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Dear Friends all, A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you -- good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen. People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious or affectionate.
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The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.
George Eliot
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O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.
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I am open to conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one must be eaten and the other paid.
George Eliot
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I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.
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Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
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O the anguish of that thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given us to know!
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Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
George Eliot
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But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.
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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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