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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.

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
Life
Often
Aspect
Struggling
Social
Certainly
Imperfect
Feelings
Conditions
Error
Beautiful
Novel
Impulse
Young
Struggle
Acts
Amidst
States
Results
Errors
Ideally
Take
State
Illusion
Determining
Great
Faith
Result
Mixed

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In our spring-time every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.
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Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.' I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.
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Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow.
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Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.
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Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.
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I've had my say out, and I shall be the' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living, if you're to be corked up forever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel.
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It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth, and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a mystery we can give no account of.
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A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
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Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.
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One of the tortures of jealousy is, that it can never turn away its eyes from the thing that pains it.
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We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings.
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We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
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There is no short-cut no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must still be trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.
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So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.
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Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.
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There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence.
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The rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families.
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Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.
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