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I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

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
Belief
Honourable
Wrong
Shameful
Heaven
Steam
Society
Ruling
Tell
Engines
Power
Greatest
Right
Opinion
Work
Public

More quotes by George Eliot

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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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It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
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One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.
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... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.
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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.
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Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.
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I protest against any absolute conclusion.
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The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.
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I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
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When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
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A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She'd make them newly, being what she was.
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That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.
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Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.
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The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
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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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I will to make life less bitter for a few within my reach.
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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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Human longings are perversely obstinate and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow.
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... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.
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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.
George Eliot