Quote

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

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Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
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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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We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.
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What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.
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It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.
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Folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done.
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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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Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame she had been blamed her whole life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
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I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.
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But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?
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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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Primary (the LDS Church's Sunday school for children) is where you go to do with somebody else's mother the things you would do with your own mother if she weren't so busy teaching Primary.
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We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves
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Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
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I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over.
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Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.
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All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!
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... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.
George Eliot
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Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it.
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Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.
George Eliot