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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.

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
Cannot
Skirts
Light
Perfectly
Part
Darkness
Power
Divine
Even
Struggle
Middlemarch
Good
Quite
Narrower
Would
Evil
Widening
Making
Desiring

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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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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.
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Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
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It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
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Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,--the ties that have made others dependent on us,--and would cut them in two.
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Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
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I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
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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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Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.
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Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
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Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone that by unexpected words.
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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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The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
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There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work.... The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot.
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