Quote

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 and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.

George Eliot

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George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
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Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
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Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Nothing
Helping
Helps
Inquiry
Looks
Keep
Dinner
Hurts
Many
Others
Lips
Urges
Thing
Women
Answer
Pale
Men
Littles
Tears
Breakfast
Time
Back
Pride
Mortals
Middlemarch
Look
Answers
Disappointment
Inquiries
Little
Hurt
Hide
Devour

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In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother's knee.
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That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
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Perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering, than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning--when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth.
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This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.
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Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito, having observed that a nom de plume secures all the advantages without the disagreeables of reputation.
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A proud woman who has learned to submit carries all her pride to the reinforcement of her submission, and looks down with severe superiority on all feminine assumption as unbecoming.
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Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.
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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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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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Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.
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Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.
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It is hard to believe long together that anything is worth while, unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.
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It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.
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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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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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Speech is often barren but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.
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You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
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The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation, as the moment of finding an idea.
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Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
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What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.
George Eliot